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\tBecome A Member<\/a><\/p>\n In August, as Grace Young walked down Doyers Street in Manhattan\u2019s Chinatown, she was \u201cstunned\u201d<\/a> to see that Ting\u2019s Gift Shop, a charming gift shop that operated there for nearly 70 years, had disappeared.<\/p>\n \u201cIn its place, yet another bubble tea chain \u2014 probably the tenth to open in Chinatown this year,\u201d Young, a Chinese American food anthropologist and celebrated cookbook author, wrote on Instagram<\/a> afterward. \u201cAt this rate, will Chinatown become Bubble Tea Town?\u201d<\/p>\n Boba, the sugary tapioca tea beverage originally from Taiwan, has been popular in American Chinatowns for well over a decade. But in the last two years its presence in Manhattan\u2019s Chinatown has proliferated dramatically. <\/p>\n Today, there are more than 30 standalone boba shops in the neighborhood\u2019s two-mile radius, each an average of 230 feet from the next \u2014 less than the length of a typical city block. <\/p>\n At least 15 of these appeared between now and the beginning of 2024, more than the number that began operations in the 10-year period between 2013 and 2023. They\u2019ve supplanted a variety of businesses: houseware shops, Chinese dry goods stores, pharmacies, salons. <\/p>\n This boom is unfolding amid widespread small-business closures<\/a> and a residential population that has become less working-class and less Asian<\/a>. And while most of the new boba shops are a part of multinational chains based in Asia, mostly staffed and often frequented by Asian Americans, few have connected the trend to commercial gentrification or how this \u201cbobafication\u201d is reshaping Chinatown\u2019s streets, economy and rhythms of life.<\/p>\n Young\u2019s question has real implications, and it sheds light on how ethnicity and food can camouflage gentrification taking place in immigrant enclaves. As a citywide affordability crisis deepens, the bubble tea boom reflects a broader struggle over who the neighborhood\u2019s future is being built for.<\/p>\n A legacy business becomes a boba shop<\/p>\n Run by three generations of Ting women, Ting\u2019s Gift Shop sold handmade porcelain, silk garments and whimsical toys behind a rustic red storefront with a lived-in history of its own. <\/p>\n Any physical trace of that today is gone. This past summer, the Tings retired, and 18 Doyers Street became the newest TEAPULSE, a Shanghai-based boba chain with over 3,000 locations. Questions of Ting\u2019s economic viability played a major role in the decision to shutter, especially in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, which kept the shop closed for six months. <\/p>\n