Continuing from the previous text, the story resumes. I saw the manager responsible for the water bar's products, who every morning pours the Lipton yellow can into a large box specifically for tea leaves, then puts on disposable gloves and mixes the tea powder evenly. I initially thought they only used the Lipton yellow can to brew tea, and after returning home, I bought the same packaged products and followed the tea-to-water ratio as instructed by the water bar staff to brew it. However, the tea brewed at that time, when mixed with a certain proportion of black and white milk and adjusted with sugar to my personal taste, was not impressive. The next morning, I mustered the courage to ask about it, and the answer was simply, "It's self-mixed."

Until the water bar was short-staffed to handle the cup orders, they brought in someone from the floor to help brew milk tea, and that person was not me, but a girl named Amin. The good thing is that Amin is from Kaiping, Jiangmen, and according to ancestry, I am from Taishan, Jiangmen; we share a common dialect and communicate in our local language, which those from non-Siyip cultural areas might not understand. Every time I passed by the water bar, I saw her operating it herself. When I asked her in Taishan dialect, she reflexively replied in Kaiping dialect, and the answer turned out to be technically simple: just brew for fifteen minutes and then pull the tea. During breaks, I would order takeout from home to try it out.

At that time, the most famous brand in Guangzhou was specifically a tea shop focusing on Hong Kong-style milk tea and lemon tea, founded by Yang Zhibin (Ben). He won the championship in the South China region of the Golden Tea King competition. Although he did not win the crown in the international competition, he ultimately won the international gold yuan-yang championship. Those years, the promotion on short video platforms was indeed explosive, claiming that the champion milk tea and champion yuan-yang were the highlights at the main store on Xihu Road in Guangzhou. If Ben himself made the milk tea or yuan-yang (which combines tea and coffee in Hong Kong-style drinks, adding sugar and milk), it was sold for 99 yuan a cup. Even though my part-time job limited my purchasing power at that time, I was really interested in trying their most ordinary yet representative product. I live in Henan, Guangzhou, so I ordered takeout from the Tongfu store on Jiangnan West, and the drink was indeed smooth, full of tea aroma, and had an enduring aftertaste.