I was rather shockingly transported back to the 1970s the other day when, walking through central Cambridge, I overheard a Caucasian family very loudly laugh that “a new Oriental tapioca shop” had opened in town.

They were referring to HEYTEA, the popular Chinese tea chain which opened its Lion Yard branch this March. I and numerous other friends had long been anticipating the end of its drawn-out construction; Blank Street managed to build and open itself within the timespan, and – as the proud stereotypical W/asians that we are – we went once, twice, a good three times during its opening week. A month later, the shop still draws a queue daily.

But deploying the word “Oriental” in 2026 is to look into the sleek little HEYTEA location and see something not only deeply unusual but faintly anachronistic, archaic and excessive. It sees Asian consumer culture more broadly as exotically absurd.

I must have featured in at least five locals’ bemused videos as they pointed and asked, often holding a mess from Bubbleology or T4, what made the drinks here any different from their own. I reiterate that for the most part it was not HEYTEA itself that drew attention so much as it was the sheer bewilderment at how many people, of almost entirely Asian descent, knew exactly what it was and considered it worth queueing for. Blank Street opened to plenty of buzz as well, but nobody stood around filming the line or muttering in incredulous confusion what on earth could justify this ridiculous scene.

“A young, visibly Asian queue outside a premium Chinese chain seems to easily confirm the perception […] of their wealth and insularity”

Under the amusement seems to sit something more proprietary. It is pointless and backward to be pessimistic about cultural exchange: plenty of Asian consumer culture now circulates unquestioned in Britain. I’d argue that in Cambridge the conversation is largely about the perception of East Asian international students. A young, visibly Asian queue outside a premium Chinese chain seems to easily confirm the perception – not entirely unfounded, as Varsity previously explored – of their wealth and insularity. It could also, more resentfully, as Duncan Paterson has argued, look like the further tearing down and commercialising of the historic centre to cater to the privileged and separatist demands of temporary residents too attached to their own comforts, insufficiently interested in mixing.

My HEYTEA orientalist is rearticulating their racial annoyance into some kind of anti-commercial nostalgia. They are expressing irritation at class excess and the “oversaturation” of the bubble tea market, as though T4 and Xing Fu Tang taste anything alike, as though you could pay any self-respecting person to go to B. Tap Baron. I venture to say that this is a similar kind of hypocritical, xenophobic moralising that Labubus were subjected to – and coincidentally the POPMART store is right across the street, two giants of the forewarned Asian hypercapitalist doomscape. While there is a very real conversation to be had about overconsumption and luxury culture across Asia, there is little purchase to the idea that trend-hopping and mindless hoarding is a specifically Asian pathology. It is easy to localise a global culture of excess in Labubus and another “Oriental tapioca shop,” each so unmistakably other that they can stand in for a wider fantasy about the uniquely evil irrationality and vulgarity of Asian wealth. The stereotype of the rich Asian international student seems to select just enough truth about genuine inequality to license a much wider contempt.

“Unfamiliarity with the foreign takes the easy route of simply flattening differences”

In more concrete terms, an increase in foreign residents doesn’t translate to a ready adaptation of local palates, and I am not surprised to frequently pass people turning their noses at the store, despite how inoffensive tea seems to be. Many still fear MSG; many have become used to the Westernised spinoffs which cater to their tastes. HEYTEA is, indeed, not particularly open to discovery, not even to the Asia-curious young weeaboo. It has an app, an established consumer ecosystem; there are no garish decorations (HearTea Cherry), no supplementary “regular snacks” (Hefaure). You can taste the matcha in the drink.

It is unproductive to gatekeep who gets to make or consume what, but insisting B. Tap Baron – an entirely British institution – produces the same thing, and can/should perform the same function for the diverse residents of Cambridge, is condescending and narrow-minded. I take issue with the confidence with which one can decide their broader label is sufficient, and how, even if not intending malice, unfamiliarity with the foreign takes the easy route of simply flattening differences.

I’d argue that those filming, shaking their heads hopelessly, were reacting to the visibility of Asian students enjoying “yet another” thing made with them in mind. I do not necessarily see anything wrong with wanting to “preserve” historic Cambridge – but is the stiff reaction to HEYTEA in particular not a little racialised? A line that keeps cropping up on social media lately is that people are “in a very Chinese time in their lives” – I suppose that only goes so far as “Chinese” looks old-world and distant. How should “Oriental” consumption present itself before it becomes excessive, or threatening?