by Tao Jun, Dong Hua

HO CHI MINH CITY, June 2 (Xinhua) -- Like Vietnamese football fans who are willing to stand in an endless long line, patiently waiting hours to buy a ticket to support their home team, many local youngsters are ready to do the same, but just to buy bubble tea.

"Ten Ren bubble tea has unique fragrance and moderate sweetness. So I come here to drink it every other day," Tran Thu Thuy, a student at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Education, told Xinhua on Thursday, while queuing for a cup of tea at Ten Ren's Tea on Vo Van Ngan Street, Ho Chi Minh City.

"Ten Ren's Tea has a policy of 'Buy 1 Get 2' every Thursday. And this tea shop is very near our university. They are contributing factors to its popularity here," the cute girl added, winking playfully and taking a selfie photo to post on her Facebook page.

According to the tea shop's manager, Ten Ren's Tea was born in China's Taiwan in 1953, and entered Vietnam for the first time in 2017, and after just one year, the number of its shops in Ho Chi Minh City has surged to 11. "Facebook page 'Ten Ren Vietnam' has received 37,395 likes, and 37,759 followers," the manager told Xinhua on Thursday.

Younger than Ten Ren Vietnam, Meet & More from South Korea set foot on the Vietnamese soil in early 2018, and currently has three bubble tea shops in Ho Chi Minh City and one in central Da Nang city.

Bubble tea has mushroomed not only in Vietnam's big cities such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang, but also in mountainous provinces. Many bubble tea shops have appeared in northern Cao Bang province bordering China, which houses many ethnic communities.

Bubble tea entered the Vietnamese market around 2000, but with a simple formula: tea plus milk plus chewy tapioca balls, and local customers loved it. Over the past few years, especially 2016 and 2017, the Vietnamese market has been flooded with bubble tea brands, mostly from China's Taiwan, and some others from China's Hong Kong as well as Japan, Thailand, Singapore and South Korea.

Well-known foreign brands in Vietnam include Ding Tea, Gongcha, Chago, Heekcaa, Royal Tea, Tea Story, Toco Toco, Chatime, Bobapop, Koi and Uncle Tea. Meanwhile, some Vietnamese bubble tea brands also have large customer bases.

Foreign brands now offer wider ranges of products with more eye-catching designs and various tastes and flavors such as peach, coconut, plum, melon, raspberry and cream.

"In the past, we had little choice, either lemon tea or milk coffee in boring simple glass or plastic cups, but not all of us can taste the acridity or bitterness. Besides, we had nothing to chew while drinking," Nguyen Thanh Trung, a high school student, told Xinhua when sipping his icy golden bubble black tea with a price tag of 50,000 Vietnamese dong (2.2 U.S. dollars) at Singaporean-branded Koi The Cafe on Pham Hong Thai Road, Ho Chi Minh City.

Most of Vietnamese customers are grade students and office clerks who want a refreshing drink with their favorite fruit flavors and something to chew (tapioca balls), while drinking it. Now, teenagers and college students often have more pocket money so they can afford a cup of bubble tea at a price tag of around 50,000 Vietnamese dong.

"My mom prepares my breakfast at home, so she offers me 1 million Vietnamese dong (44 U.S. dollars) worth of pocket money a month. This is one-fifth of her salary, but I do not waste it on drinking beer or smoking cigarettes. I just spend it on drinking bubble tea along with my classmates," Trung, the 16-year-old student with a tattoo of red lips on his neck, said.

According to a recent survey by Lozi, a Vietnamese online platform which shares eating and drinking experiences across Vietnam, the country currently has some 1,500 bubble tea shops, mainly in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, and over 53 percent of the respondents said they drink bubble tea at least once a week.

In the first half of 2017, on average, eight bubble tea shops were opened in Hanoi each month, according to the survey. Quiet shops sold 200-300 cups, and busy ones sold thousands of cups a day.

Now, with more bubble tea shops joining the Vietnamese market, their profits have shrunk, but their products' lower prices have become another contributing factor to their popularity in the Southeast Asian nation.

"Bubble tea streets" such as Nguyen Hue, Huynh Thuc Khang, Ho Tung Mau, Ngo Duc Ke and Phan Xich Long in Ho Chi Minh City, and Ba Trieu, Xa Dan and Chua Lang in Hanoi are still busy serving their customers all day and night.

Their popularity has also led to the thriving of training courses on bubble tea making. "We charge each learner 4.5 million Vietnamese dong (nearly 200 U.S. dollars), but more and more people, both middle-aged and young, are registering for our training course," Tran Ba Hoan from the Hanoi-based Barista Skills Training Center told Xinhua.