Pu’er Coffee

 Not long ago, I went to Qiandao Lake to enjoy the autumn scenery during the off-peak travel season. Even though it was already winter, this year Hangzhou had been unusually slow to turn cold. To me, the low season is actually the right way to experience Qiandao Lake. The trees shift through layers of color, and the lake and mountains reveal nature at its most effortless. From the moment I stepped out of the high-speed rail station, even the air felt more “health-boosting” than Hangzhou’s—haha. It’s an ideal destination for a quiet weekend escape. Whenever I travel to an unfamiliar city, one of my rituals is to seek out local coffee shops. For me, cafés are a kind of unspoken link between myself and a city. This habit has become deeply ingrained in how I travel—it’s a way of getting closer to local culture and creating a personal, irreplaceable memory of a place. That said, based on everything I could find beforehand, there was only one café in Qiandao Lake that truly felt worth...

 Not long ago, while scrolling through Weibo, I came across a post saying that Guangxi has started growing its own coffee . That immediately caught my attention and genuinely surprised me. Curious, I decided to dig deeper and share what I found with you. From a coffee perspective, China is actually a rather unique country. It has a complete coffee supply chain —from cultivation and roasting to distribution and consumption. China is both a coffee-producing nation and a coffee-consuming one. When people talk about Chinese coffee, Yunnan naturally comes to mind as the most well-known producing region. Over the past few years, we’ve all witnessed the remarkable transformation of Yunnan coffee. It has moved from being primarily bulk-purchased for instant coffee to embracing a mature specialty coffee path. Today, even traditionally processed Yunnan Catimor can offer a clean and pleasant cup profile, and varieties like Yunnan Geisha have also emerged, bringing greater diversity. These...

  Over the past decade, coffee consumption in China has grown by 150%, far outpacing the global average. As of 2024, Shanghai is home to 9,115 coffee shops—more than London, New York, or Tokyo. Local roasters, specialty chains, and tech-driven retail concepts now form a complete ecosystem. … If you search online for how China’s specialty coffee market has evolved in recent years, you’ll see plenty of statistics like these. And Shanghai, more than any other city, stands at the center of it all. Whether viewed through the lens of history and culture, or through sheer economic momentum and speed of development, Shanghai has delivered what may be the most convincing report card for specialty coffee in China. These numbers almost justify calling it a global coffee capital—perhaps “one of” them, at least. But numbers alone are never the full story. To understand their deeper economic meaning, one premise must be made clear: a city is not defined as a coffee capital simply by the num...

  In the past, I envied the interesting life inside coffee shops, and the elderly gentleman just now also loved this kind of life. He said that in this rich and fragrant air, there is an endless experience of life to savor. — Tian Han, One Night in a Coffee Shop Compared with China’s long history of tea drinking, coffee, as an imported commodity, has only a very brief two-hundred-year history of consumption. This simple brewed beverage stirs cultural trends and emotional turbulence no less than tea. According to Yangzhou Huafang Lu by Qing opera writer Li Dou, in the sixteenth year of the Daoguang reign, the Danes opened China’s first coffee shop near the Thirteen Factories in Guangzhou, which people referred to as the “black shop,” and called coffee “black wine.” It is not hard to see the tentative and resistant emotions people had toward coffee. They reluctantly sipped a mouthful of the bitter or sour brown liquid, just as the rulers had no choice but to open the crumbling ...

 The 2024 Yunnan Coffee Industry Development Report (hereinafter referred to as “the Report”) was recently released, offering a comprehensive look at the strong momentum of Yunnan’s coffee sector. According to the Report, in 2024, Yunnan’s coffee planting area reached 1.1931 million mu (approximately 79,500 hectares), accounting for 97.85% of the total national planting area. The province’s total coffee output hit 150,200 tons , making up 98.65% of China’s total production, while its total agricultural output value reached 4.872 billion yuan , representing 98.61% of the national figure. With these overwhelming numbers, Yunnan has firmly established itself as China’s leading coffee-producing region , and the full-scale development of the “Yun Coffee” industrial chain is accelerating the creation of a distinct “Chinese coffee flavor.” A Coffee Landscape Defined by Altitude and Diversity Yunnan remains the largest coffee cultivation region in China, with plantations mainly di...

 In recent years, China has emerged as one of the world’s most important coffee-consuming and producing nations. Thanks to its exceptional natural conditions, strong industrial foundation, and robust research capabilities, Yunnan’s Dehong Prefecture has become one of the first coffee-growing regions in China. Known internationally for its “Dehong Coffee,” the region’s plantations are now full of ripe red cherries as the harvest season arrives once again. In Nongxian Village of Ruili—where small coffee beans were first introduced in 1893, marking the start of China’s century-long coffee history—a remarkable transformation is underway: from “the hometown of Chinese coffee” to a “genetic resource treasure trove.” 01 Fifteen Years of Scientific Perseverance: Building China’s Coffee “Chip Factory” As one of the earliest regions in Yunnan to cultivate coffee, Dehong’s coffee industry has a deep and rich legacy. The crop was first introduced in 1893 and began industrial development in...

 This is China’s only coffee to ever win the Eureka Gold Award, hailed by international baristas as a “gem of quality.” Yet, the journey of this coffee bean—from the field to the cup—has long faced the challenge of being “hidden in remote mountains, unnoticed by the world.” On one hand, new coffee estates are springing up rapidly; on the other, Baoshan Small-Bean Coffee’s market share remains stubbornly low. To explore solutions for the industry, visits were made to local estates and companies, seeking to understand the tension between “premium genetics” and “market difficulties.” Challenges for New Estates: Avoiding Photo-Op Backdrops and Overcoming Homogeneity At the recently opened Gongjiang Coffee Estate, the lush surrounding mountains and meticulously designed landscapes create a welcoming impression—every snapshot looks like a perfect photo. But walking through the estate, visitors are few, and lively scenes exist only in pictures. “The environment and coffee taste are go...

          In a quiet corner of Pu’er, Yunnan , an unspoken celebration is quietly coming to life — the beginning of a brand-new coffee harvest season .         It’s that magical time of year when coffee beans draw energy from the earth, complete their journey through nature, and finally transform into a cup of pure, aromatic bliss. ☕ A Dialogue Between Nature and Time: The Rebirth of Pu’er Coffee         Blessed with its unique geography and mild climate, Pu’er coffee carries a flavor unlike any other. When the coffee cherries begin to blush from green to red, it signals the start of a new season — a sign that nature’s rhythm is right on time. 🌱 1. The Ripening Cycle of Coffee Cherries A Pu’er coffee tree takes about three years to fully mature. From the moment the seed touches the soil to the day the cherries are harvested, every step is a patient dialogue between nature and time . It takes nearly a year for th...