Milk tea is my reckoning.

It contains all the things that are sinful but make me happy: caffeine, sugar, fat… Every time when I felt stressed out for my undergraduate assignment, I would walk five minutes, from the library seat to Starlight Supermarket, where I could find my favorite milk tea shop, Happy Aunt. It was not a big chain store, just a small shop with three or four staff. I went here so frequently when I was applying for graduate school, that a short young woman working here could recognize me.

She enjoyed showing me her new ‘inventions’ on the seasonal menu. The most impressive new drink was a green milk tea with sticky rice wine, and Aiyu jelly. Holding such a drink in winter, I would feel energetic again to write my endless paper. I never tasted anything like that after my graduation, not in any other large chain milk tea shop.

Apart from this small tea shop on campus, I also like A Little, Hey Tea and Happy Lemon. Those tea shops were deeply connected with certain memories. A Little is famous for its really cheap price, around $2, and its unstable sugar level, which is highly dependent on the staffs’ mood and their own concepts of ‘a spoon of sugar’. The nearest A Little is located near the south gate of my university. I need to walk across a pedestrian bridge over the highway to get here. So I really enjoy walking here after dinner, to watch the sunset and the endless stream of cars, while holding a sweet, warm drink.

Hey Tea was a luxurious milk tea brand for me when I was in college. It’s alway located in fancy shopping malls and the waiting time can reach one or two hours during its busy time. So I often order it online ahead of time when going shopping with my friends. When we are about to be tired shopping, it can be a perfect time to pick up the tea.

And the nearest Happy Lemon is located near a movie theater that I visited most. As a movie fan who will show up at the cinema at least twice a month, I always bought a pineapple lemonade with white pearl and enjoyed it with movies.

I didn’t realize how much I rely on them, until I arrived in New York.

Back in Beijing, I can easily order them online and get the delivery very fast under a quite reasonable price. ￥25, less than $4, can get me a very fancy drink with multiple toppings, even in Hey Tea, one of the most expensive milk tea shops in China. But here, I can only buy a basic type of milk tea at the cost of $7 or even $8 in some tea shops.

In this project, I want to use data to support my observation during my first six months in the U.S, that the milk tea in New York City is much, much, more expensive than it in Beijing.

So, I manually scrape 144 drinks from three milk tea shops I mentioned above in Beijing, and scrape 292 drinks from five milk tea shops that I visited in New York. I extract the base drinks, toppings and fruit types of all 436 drinks, as well as their prices.

From the first chart, it can be clearly seen that the drinks’ prices in New York are much higher than Beijing. The median price of all the milk tea shops I collected in NYC is almost twice as expensive as the median price of Beijing.

The most common drink type in all shops is milk tea, of course, followed by fruit tea and pure tea. It’s also very common to sell flavored milk and cheese tea for milk shops in the dataset.

As for the price by category, most of the expensive drinks in China belong to Hey tea ( I said it was a ‘luxurious’ milk tea brand in China lol), with the price of $5.16. The cheese fruit tea of Hey Tea is quite famous. This is why you can see some dark spots under fruit tea category clustering around $5. Such an price is quite unusual among Chinese milk tea shops. The most expensive Chinese drink in the dataset is berry bang cheezo. This is also one of my favorite drinks of this brand. Basically, it is a combination of jasmine green tea, ice blended fresh blueberries and strawberries topped up with cheese foam. The cheese foam made by Hey Tea is very smooth and soft.

The most expensive drink of the dataset goes to the large Mango Pomelo Sago by Yifang, the price of which is $10. Originally, it was a type of dessert popular in Hong Kong, made by diced mango, pomelo, sago, coconut milk, and milk. Many milk tea shops in China adopt this dessert into drinks, with larger portions of coconut milk, milk and mango juice, topped with diced mango, grapefruit pulp and pomelo.

It’s also worth noting that the actual price I pay in NYC will be higher than the menu price because of tax and tips. It even makes the situation worse!

I also want to see what the most common type of base drink, topping and fruit is used in milk tea shops both in Beijing and New York. As far as I understand, milk tea is just different types of tea mixed with milk. But actually, there are two falsehoods: 1) in most cases, a drink whose name contains just milk tea, especially among those cheap brands, is made of creamer and tea powder; 2) milk tea is usually made of no-name black tea and the shops will definitely highlight the actual name of high-quality tea in the drink name, like Tie Guan Yin and Pu-er. Thus, if you want to get a cup of healthier ‘milk tea’, try to order a tea latte with a specific tea name, like TieGuanYin Tea Latte. But for sure, it might cost more!

As for toppings, there are multiple names for the sticky, little, rice balls in the milk tea. Pearl, boba, bubble, bobo – – all of them are basically the same thing, but vary in size and flavor. Personally, I like white pearls and taro balls over pearls. I think white and taro ones are more chewy. But I need to do more research to find out what ingredients make them taste different. Also, brown sugar and pearls are a golden combination. I found brown sugar bubble milk tea was really popular in NYC milk tea shops, more than in Beijing.

As for fruit, I am not surprised by the fact that strawberries are leading. Who doesn't like strawberries? And I really miss the strawberry fruit tea of Hey Tea in China particularly because they truly smashed dozens of strawberries into the drink, not adding any syrup or powder or jam. I am still looking for such fresh strawberry tea in NYC. But I bet the price will make me cry!

If you are interested in my data and analysis process, please click here.