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discovered zhen zhu nai cha, as bubble milk tea, or boba, is known in Chinese, when I was ten. It was the early nineties, and I’d been in the United States only two years, living and going to school in Connecticut towns so uniformly white that soy sauce was still considered exotic there. A few times a year, my mother and I would take the Metro-North an hour south to New York City for the sole purpose of stockpiling Chinese groceries. These were not leisurely shopping trips but carefully strategized plans of attack, during which my mother practiced bargain-hunting as blood sport. Behind her I’d trudge, up Canal and down East Broadway, a weary foot soldier weighed down by growing satchels of fish tofu and Chinese cabbage and hoisin sauce. Invariably, our last stop was Taipan Bakery, which offered an end-of-day discount on goods such as red-bean buns and sponge cake, my favorites. At some point, it also began selling a newfangled drink, served in plastic cups with jumbo straws and what appeared to be shiny marbles piled on the bottom. An order cost about three dollars, half of my mother’s hourly wage cleaning houses. Yet every time she relented and let me buy one, and the victory tasted as sweet as the drink itself.