High-Altitude Coffee Makes Its Debut as Mangshi Farmer Brings Beans to the City

At a Glance (China Coffee Network): High-altitude specialty coffee from Zhongshan Township, Mangshi (Dehong) is winning favor as a local farmer opens a café to bring the mountain harvest to the city—with the township’s coffee industry output value surpassing RMB 26.4 million.

At dawn in the coffee groves of Zhongshan Township, Mangshi, in the Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture, Yang Haiqing, a villager from Muchengpo Village, shoulders a bamboo basket and picks the ripe coffee cherries. From harvest on the mountain to processing and sale, the beans can appear in the café he runs on Puti Street in Mangshi within about a week.

Zhongshan Township spans an extreme elevation range—Mangshi’s highest point (2,836 m) and lowest point (526 m) both lie within its bounds. “Four seasons on one mountain, different weather every ten li”: the large diurnal temperature swing lengthens the cherries’ ripening cycle, letting the beans accumulate more aroma and body. But in earlier years, Zhongshan’s coffee could be grown well yet sold for little. Red cherries were gathered by the jin, bringing back barely any money, and farmers squatted by the fields wondering, “This foreign thing—can it really put food on the table?” Yang, a Party member, was among the first in the village to work with coffee. While others worried, he held to one belief: “Our coffee is no worse than the famous producing regions elsewhere; what it lacks is simply a chance to be seen.”

To make the coffee “seen,” Zhongshan Township adopted “high-altitude specialty coffee” as its development direction—from improved varietal selection and scientific management to stable-price purchasing, with Party members planting first to dispel villagers’ doubts through real harvests. The township regularly invites agricultural experts to give on-site guidance—pruning, pest and disease control, water and fertilizer management—teaching hands-on. Yang was a “regular” at the training classes; over the years he filled two thick notebooks, from varietal selection to crop care.

The township also built platforms, organizing core farmers to attend training in e-commerce and store operations—brand packaging, customer retention, store management. In 2025, with the township’s industry support, Yang opened a café on Puti Street in Mangshi, bringing Zhongshan’s high-altitude coffee to urban consumers. He relies not on fancy labels but on an “identity tag” beside each cup, noting the altitude and processing method in clear, careful handwriting. After a sip, a visitor smacked his lips: “Different from what I usually drink—can’t quite say why, just smooth.”

“We’re trying short videos to tell the story of Zhongshan’s mountain coffee. Once market feedback comes back, we’ll buy the village’s beans at higher prices based on demand, so more of the earnings reach the farmers,” Yang said.

In 2026, Zhongshan Township’s coffee planted area reached over 28,000 mu, more than half of Mangshi’s total coffee acreage. The purchase price of dried coffee cherries climbed from RMB 10/kg in 2017 to RMB 40/kg; the township’s coffee industry output surpassed RMB 26.4 million, and 160 farming households saw average income gains of over RMB 10,000. An elderly farmer from Muchengpo Village sold his beans, then turned around and bought his grandson a new bicycle. “Coffee really can put food on the table,” he said.

From the coffee groves of Muchengpo to the cafés on Puti Street, Zhongshan’s farmers have brought the good coffee grown at high altitude step by step into the city. The path Yang took will surely be followed by more and more people.

Ma Yuyan, trainee reporter, and Yin Jie, Yunnan Net; correspondent Zhao Yutuan

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