Xinzhai coffee wows drinkers across China

Recently, coffee planted in Xinzhai village of Longyang district in Baoshan city, southwest Yunnan province, has entered the mature picking season, with fresh and plump coffee cherries adorning the branches. Xinzhai is praised as the first coffee village in China.

In recent years, Xinzhai has leveraged the geographical indication brand of Baoshan Arabica coffee to promote the transformation and upgrading of the coffee industry towards premium coffee. With new concepts, new formats, and new models, it is driving the integrated development of coffee and making the fragrance of Xinzhai coffee enjoyed by consumers around the country.

"We have implemented coffee variety improvement on more than 2,000 acres (about 1.3km2), and newly planted 300 acres (about 0.2 km2) of coffee this year," said Wang Jiawei, the village’s Party secretary. And the village produced over 4,200 tons of coffee beans, achieving an agricultural output value of 120 million yuan in only 2022.

In Xinzhai, there are coffee culture experience halls, RV campsites, tent hotels, and coffee estates based on residential buildings. "In our coffee experience hall, visitors can attend open classes on coffee, learn coffee culture knowledge, and even experience brewing coffee hands-on," said Yue Yunqiang, the coffee technical director of Huke Coffee Estate.

Zhao Huaying, a villager in Xinzhai, operates a coffee courtyard, where she incorporates coffee into dishes, offering unique dishes such as coffee-stewed chicken, coffee flower-stewed eggs, and coffee sprout crispy cakes.

"In the past year, the coffee courtyard brought in an income of 80,000 yuan for the family," said Zhao. She mentioned that these days, all three rooms of the coffee courtyard's homestay have been booked, and with the arrival of winter, more tourists from other provinces will come here.

At present, Xinzhai has built five boutique coffee estates, accommodated 11 coffee enterprises, and received over 100,000 visitors annually. Having been successively rated as a national 3A-level tourist attraction and a famous tourist village in Yunnan province, it is now a tourism destination that integrates cultural experience and health tourism.

Source: Yunnan Daily; trans-editing by Wang Yunya