The Story Behind Yuan Yang Coffee: Why Does This Coffee-Tea Blend Keep You Awake?

I wonder if you've ever had this FrontStreet Coffee experience: during your student days, you first went to a Hong Kong-style tea restaurant, saw "Yuan Yang" on the menu - something you'd never seen before, and ordered it out of curiosity. It entered your mouth with a mellow, smooth, and rich taste, but that night you also stayed awake until dawn, and afterward didn't dare to order it lightly again.

It wasn't until I grew up that I discovered this drink's caffeine content is actually more potent than espresso, no wonder everyone complained they couldn't sleep after drinking it, some even staying excited for an entire night.

What is "Yuan Yang"?

As the saying goes, "Only envy Yuan Yang, not immortals." In Chinese, Yuan Yang first refers to a waterfowl native to East Asia that often appears in pairs, with "Yuan" referring to the male bird and "Yang" to the female bird. Therefore, the term Yuan Yang is often regarded as a symbol of love and companionship.

From today's everyday conversations, especially in the eyes of people from South China's F3 region (Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan) as well as Hong Kong and Macau, because "Yuan Yang" has the meaning of "two" or "pair," it's often used to describe food made by combining two different flavors. Hong Kong-style coffee plus silk stocking milk tea creates a mixed drink that we now commonly hear of as "Hong Kong-style Yuan Yang." Since it contains both milk tea and coffee, theoretically we could call this popular drink throughout the Cantonese region "Yuan Yang Milk Tea" or "Yuan Yang Coffee," as it occupies both categories.

The Mysterious Origins of Hong Kong-style Yuan Yang

It's widely known that Yuan Yang first appeared in Hong Kong, but regarding its birth and the origin of its name, there are many different stories circulating. Among them, the most widely circulated version is related to the workers who made their living at the docks every day.

Hong Kong people's habits of drinking both tea and coffee were introduced by the British during the colonial period. Early British-style milk tea was made from Ceylon black tea, fresh milk, and sugar. Both tea leaves and milk were quite expensive, serving as a symbol of the upper class, which local working class simply couldn't afford.

In the 1950s, Hong Kong people were mostly engaged in physical labor such as portering, construction, and seafaring, with needs for refreshment and energy replenishment. Dai pai dong (street food stall) owners improved British-style milk tea, using local broken tea leaves and other blended teas to create a tea base, then using repeated brewing to make the tea flavor stronger, adding evaporated milk and increasing the proportions of sugar and milk, creating a Hong Kong-style milk tea that was strong in flavor, high in calories, and economically affordable.

According to legend, at that time dock workers needed to drink a beverage every day that could both replenish their energy and quickly refresh them, so someone thought of mixing bitter but stimulating coffee into silk stocking milk tea. After drinking it, not only did it refresh and quench thirst, but it also immediately revived them completely. Soon this drinking method spread. A cup of Yuan Yang can be said to have witnessed the trend of coffee and milk tea developing simultaneously in Hong Kong.

When FrontStreet Coffee searched through relevant records, besides the dock story, there's another theory that "Hong Kong-style Yuan Yang is related to traditional Chinese medicine." Huang Jiahe, known as the "Father of Milk Tea," chairman of Kampery Group and president of the Hong Kong Federation of Restaurants & Related Trades, mentioned in an interview the birth of Hong Kong-style Yuan Yang: "Yuan Yang appeared around 1955. At that time, some customers complained that milk tea was too harsh on the stomach, while coffee was too 'heating.' So the chef at Hoi On Coffee Cafe took a balance of both and created Yuan Yang."

As for why the drink was named "Yuan Yang," there are also different explanations. Some say that Yuan Yang birds are inseparable and exceptionally harmonious. The combination of coffee and milk tea draws from this characteristic - it retains the smoothness of milk tea while also having the unique aroma of coffee. The two complement each other, hence it was named "Yuan Yang."

Others say that although coffee and milk tea are clearly two different beverages with different colors - one dark and one light - they blend together perfectly, just like male and female Yuan Yang birds, despite their vastly different appearances, always appear in pairs, hence the name "Yuan Yang."

Why Does Drinking Yuan Yang Keep You Awake All Night?

With the popularization of tea restaurant culture, the "Three Musketeers of Tea Rooms" including Yuan Yang have now spread worldwide, becoming not only a representative of Hong Kong street food culture but also an old taste in the memories of countless overseas Chinese.

It's said that a good Yuan Yang requires "three parts coffee, seven parts tea, appropriate milk" - that is, three parts coffee and seven parts tea soup, with appropriate evaporated milk added. "It's neither milk tea nor coffee, without both flavors - that's a good Yuan Yang," Huang Jiahe believes that brewing Yuan Yang is more difficult than brewing milk tea.

Because Yuan Yang simultaneously mixes two basic categories, both the coffee and tea in this classic Hong Kong drink contain large amounts of caffeine, making it quite a potent refreshing tool for most people. So when serving it to children, some tea restaurants will use sweet Ovaltine and Horlicks to make a caffeine-free version called "Children's Yuan Yang," allowing kids to also enjoy the happiness of adults.

FrontStreet Coffee also wants to add one more thing: someone once calculated through public report data that drinking a 700ml Hong Kong-style Yuan Yang contains about 510mg of caffeine, equivalent to approximately 3 cups of American coffee. If you're caffeine-intolerant and don't want to stay awake until dawn, remember not to try such Hong Kong-style Yuan Yang or Hong Kong-style milk tea lightly, otherwise...

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