一杯咖啡串起两国的温暖与相知——从云南初见到曼谷重逢

Brief (coffeeyo.com): At a China–Thailand cultural exchange dialogue in Bangkok, a Thai academic who visited Yunnan in August rushed to take a group photo for his Yunnan friends’ chat group. For him and a Thai barista, the reunion over coffee mattered more than any industry news.

At the “A Cup of Coffee Connects the World” display area of the China–Thailand Cultural Exchange Dialogue, the aroma of coffee mixed with the sound of conversation. At the booth, some people exchanged greetings, some raised their cups, some held up their phones. Piyapong, deputy dean of the Faculty of Business and Communication Arts at the University of Phayao in Thailand, said: “Come on, let’s take a photo together! I want to send it to the group chat.”

Piyapong is a coffee enthusiast. He has a group chat with friends in Yunnan, and whenever there is news from the coffee industry he shares it there. This time, what he wanted to share was not industry information but the reunion itself. “On the Yunnan trip in August I saw everyone in Kunming and Pu’er. To be able to meet again here in Bangkok makes me so happy. I want to take a group photo quickly and send it to the chat, so the friends who couldn’t come can feel my joy too. Look — someone in the group just sent a sticker saying they’re ‘taking it all in’.” As he spoke, stickers kept popping up one after another in the chat.

Thai barista Sukanya was also among those who visited Yunnan in August. This time she brought specialty coffee from Chiang Rai Province. At the booth she introduced it as she handed cups to visitors. “This is a coffee I was involved in from bean selection and processing all the way through to roasting,” she said.

“People always say ‘a cup of coffee connects the world’, and I agree completely,” Sukanya recalled. On the Yunnan trip she met friends from China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar and elsewhere. Some of them spoke no English, yet they could still talk together and laugh together. “It was the coffee that made it work. Meeting my Yunnan friends again here in Bangkok, I genuinely felt that a cup of coffee had drawn us closer together.”

Looking back on the August trip, Pu’er left the deepest impression on her. “I knew Pu’er as a historic tea city, and also as a city of coffee,” she said. Back in Thailand she often told friends about everything she had seen in Yunnan. They were amazed that local universities had opened dedicated coffee-related programmes covering the full chain — from selecting green beans and testing bean quality before roasting, through roasting itself, to preparing drinks.

She has told many friends more than once that coffee shops in Yunnan blend herbs or local speciality ingredients into their drinks to create signature brews. Her friends all say these experiments are highly creative, and that some of the combinations have not yet appeared in Thailand. “I’m bringing those ideas back as inspiration for the coffees I’ll make in the future,” Sukanya says.

From Yunnan to Bangkok, from stickers in a group chat to coffee on a display table, to the call of “come on, let’s take a photo” — this reunion had no complicated plot. It simply proved once again that when words are not enough, coffee can become a shared language; and when friends have not met for a long time, perhaps one cup is enough to reconnect them.

By Li Ling, Yunnan Daily all-media reporter (Yunnan Net).

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