Chinese Milk Tea's History: From Ancient Ritual to Riyadh Cafes

Key facts

Tea in China is not a recent trend. In 2022, the Chinese tradition of tea plantation management, hand processing, and the social customs of drinking and sharing tea was added to UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The listing covers six major tea categories, green, yellow, white, oolong, dark and black tea, spanning more than 2,000 distinct tea products passed down through family lineages and apprenticeships.

Milk tea, the sweet, milky drink most people picture when they hear the phrase Chinese milk tea today, has a much shorter history. Food historians trace the modern bubble or milk tea format to Taichung, Taiwan, in the 1980s, when local tea houses began serving chilled tea mixed with milk, sugar and chewy tapioca. Two Taichung shops, Chun Shui Tang and Hanlin Tea Room, both claim the original recipe, and the question of which one served the first cup has never fully settled.

The two histories, an ancient tea craft and a 1980s milk tea invention, are not the same story, but they meet in the cup now served across Asia and the Gulf. UNESCO's "living heritage" label matters here because it treats tea not as a museum piece but as a practice still being taught, adapted and served today, including well outside China.

What it means for Riyadh

Chinese tea culture has already had a public moment in the city this year. The Saudi Ministry of Culture's Common Ground Festival, held at Al-Malfa Hall in Misk City from December 24 to January 6 as part of the Saudi-Chinese Cultural Year, included traditional Chinese tea ceremonies where visitors sampled different teas and learned about the philosophy behind their preparation. It was one part of a wider program covering art, calligraphy and food that framed China as the festival's guest of honour.

For Riyadh residents, the everyday version of that heritage shows up in a different form: the milk tea sold at neighbourhood tea shops. That drink descends from the 1980s Taiwanese invention rather than from the older brewed-tea ceremony, but both trace back to the same broader Chinese tea culture that UNESCO recognised in 2022. Saudi Arabia has its own long-standing tea and coffee hospitality traditions, so the idea of a shared cup carrying social meaning is a familiar one. What is newer to the city is the iced, milk-based, tapioca-topped format that Taiwan popularised four decades ago.

Background

UNESCO's 2022 inscription describes Chinese tea practice as more than a beverage. It names tea's role in socialisation and in ceremonies such as weddings and sacrifices, and it credits multiple ethnic communities across China with developing distinct tea categories and preparation methods over generations. Knowledge passes down mainly through family lineages and apprenticeships among growers, processors and tea masters, which is part of why UNESCO categorised the practice as living heritage rather than a fixed historical artifact.

Milk tea grew out of a very different, much more recent moment. In 1980s Taichung, Taiwanese tea rooms began experimenting with serving tea cold and adding sweet tapioca, a familiar local snack, to the drink. The resulting mix of milk tea, tapioca pearls and syrup spread through Taiwan, then the rest of Asia, and eventually followed diaspora communities and franchise expansion into the Gulf and beyond. The tea itself carries the older tradition. The tapioca and the cold, sweet format are the newer, specifically Taiwanese contribution.

By the time milk tea chains began opening in Gulf cities, both timelines were already folded into the same cup: leaves and processing methods rooted in a centuries-old craft, served in the cold, sweet, tapioca format that Taichung tea rooms popularised in the 1980s. Riyadh's tea shops inherited that combination rather than inventing a separate one.

Takeaway

Chinese milk tea, as sold in Riyadh today, sits at the intersection of two timelines: a centuries-deep tea culture that UNESCO now protects as living heritage, and a comparatively recent 1980s Taiwanese invention that turned tea into a portable, sweet, everyday drink. Both showed up in the city this year, one on a festival stage at Misk City, the other on cafe counters across Riyadh.