Chinese-Style Coffee: A Phenomenon Beyond the Beverage Itself

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The Rise of Tea-Coffee Culture

Recently, the tea-coffee combination, which has maintained a low profile for a century, has suddenly gained popularity!

According to WeChat Index data, since ChaYanYueSe launched their coffee brand "YuanYang Coffee" last August, the tea-coffee combination has successfully captured the attention of mainstream consumers. Compared to the usual various dairy products + coffee/juice + coffee combinations, the collision between Eastern and Western cultural differences has sparked a new wave of Chinese-style coffee enthusiasm.

What is Yuanyang?

Yuanyang first appeared in Hong Kong, China. According to records, people in the Hong Kong region before the mid-19th century did not have the habit of drinking coffee and milk tea. Both beverages were introduced by the British who began ruling Hong Kong in the mid-19th century. Initially, milk tea culture was only popular among the British upper class, but due to the high cost of general tea and milk, ordinary working classes could hardly enjoy "authentic" milk tea. Therefore, a tea base was developed using local broken tea leaves and other tea blends, and made with the then cheaper evaporated milk.

The origin of Yuanyang cannot be definitively traced, but one theory suggests that Yuanyang milk tea was invented by laborers working at the docks. Because cranes were not widely available in the past, many porters were needed to handle manual labor at docks, loading and unloading cargo from ships. During breaks, these porters would mix bitter and stimulating coffee with tea to quench hunger and thirst, replenish energy, and refresh themselves.

Later, Yuanyang expanded from grassroots classes to different sectors of society. Different tea restaurants gradually added evaporated milk to Yuanyang products to improve palatability, adjusting texture and flavor. Yuanyang gradually won people's hearts, becoming one of the representative beverages of the Hong Kong region and also a representative tea-coffee beverage for Chinese people. Yuanyang has a history of a hundred years—why has it only become popular now?

For many years, this Yuanyang coffee has only been popular in Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macau regions. Compared to milk tea beverages popular nationwide, Hong Kong-style milk tea/Yuanyang has a higher tea concentration, usually accompanied by tea astringency, making it a product not easily accepted by consumers nationwide.

In addition, the continuous popularization of bubble tea shops over the years has made people's preferences for milk tea focus more on toppings and milk flavor, with little attention to tea taste. However, with the revival of traditional Chinese culture and the rise of "guochao" (national trend) culture, people hope that Chinese tea can be known and understood by more people, leading to the formation of a new-style tea drinking culture. Only then did mainstream consumers begin to pay attention to the "tea" in milk tea. But compared to the taste of Hong Kong-style tea beverages, new-style tea drinks are closer to the taste preferences of contemporary young people—refreshing.

The Evolution of Coffee Innovation

Over the years, coffee innovation has been based on the addition of dairy products. From past to present, regardless of the region, coffee categories and flavors have been quite singular—either black coffee or milk coffee, and this was no exception when introduced to China. However, with Chinese consumers' curiosity and pursuit of new flavors in the recent decade, milk coffee variations clearly could not satisfy consumers, so juice-based coffees began to appear.

The emergence of fruit juice-based coffees can be said to have changed Chinese consumers' impression of coffee and attracted more mainstream consumers' attention to coffee. Coffee is no longer just ridiculously bitter black coffee or greasy milk coffee—coffee can also be very refreshing. Refreshing-tasting coffee became beloved by Chinese consumers, and the demand for fresh flavors became increasingly prominent. For this reason, many coffees launched in China later were predominantly refreshing in taste, which also created further opportunities for tea to collaborate with coffee. The tea-coffee combination also made more people know and pay attention to the "Yuanyang" product.

New Yuanyang: Chinese-Style Coffee?

Compared to traditional Yuanyang beverages, new Yuanyang has a more refreshing taste. The base is no longer strong tea made from blended tea leaves, and the milk is no longer evaporated milk with a rich mellow feeling. Consumers' acceptance of the product will be higher, and there is also a greater sense of ceremony supporting local culture.

Is Yuanyang tea-coffee Chinese-style coffee? If compared with Italian coffee and Japanese coffee culture, the current development of coffee culture in China may not be recorded in classic chronicles because it has no roots and no origin—just various strange coffee-making methods rather than coffee itself. But in fact, whether it's Italian or Japanese schools, their focus is not really on coffee either; they are just ways to make mainstream consumers further accept coffee.

Italian coffee culture can become a country's tradition, like "drinking water and remembering its source"—the strong coffee flavor allows later generations to remember the hardships of their ancestors, and the flavor of the coffee itself is not the focus. Japanese coffee culture is recognized by so many people because they changed the impression that coffee only has a strong taste, making it balanced and mellow, allowing more people to accept coffee.

Then adding different materials to adjust the taste of coffee and make it acceptable to more local consumers can actually become a new culture. In Europe and America, when people mention Hong Kong-style milk tea/Yuanyang, they think of Chinese people and China. In Southeast Asia, when people mention Nanyang coffee, they also think of Chinese people and China.

When mainstream coffee innovation methods in China are later taken abroad and welcomed by consumers in different regions, the reputation of Chinese-style coffee may not actually be weaker than Italian or Japanese coffee cultures.

After all, tradition and heritage require innovation, and only innovation can continuously attract new generations to recognize and pay attention to something.

Image source: Internet

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