People's Daily | Kunshan, Suzhou: a cup of coffee scents the whole city

A cup of coffee scents the whole city

Suzhou Daily reporters Zhu Xinguo, Zhan Zhangsun

People’s Daily (October 8, 2026, edition 10)

On October 5, at a coffee shop on the lakeside boulevard of Dianshan Lake in Kunshan, Jiangsu, many cycling enthusiasts sipped coffee and rested — the spot has become a viral check-in point for cyclists across the Yangtze River Delta.

At the end of September, the 2026 International (Kunshan) Specialty Coffee Exhibition was held in Kunshan, with over 230 quality brands from 21 countries and regions on show.

Shanghai visitors Yu Chun and Wang Jie are coffee lovers; in the morning they toured the exhibition and bought plenty of specialty coffee beans and coffee concentrate. Then they took the subway straight to a café on Nanhou Street — a “coffee check-in spot” they had been “planted” (recommended) online.

This café sits inside a nearly century-old residence, with white walls and dark tiles, antique and elegant. In mid-September the old house reopened in a “coffee space + cultural experience” format; since trial operation, about 40% of visitors have been from out of town.

October 8, the page layout of People’s Daily, edition 10.

Statistics show that 2 of every 3 cups of coffee nationwide are roasted from beans processed in Kunshan. More than 40 of the world’s top coffee brands have rooted here, and over 1,000 cafés dot the city.

The coffee aroma also drifts to the countryside. At a guesthouse in Jijiadun Village, Jinxi Town, Kunshan, a coffee machine hums. Sun Xiang, the guesthouse’s manager, was once an orthopedic doctor in Shanghai; on his first visit to Jijiadun with his wife, he was captivated and later settled down as a “new villager.”

Leveraging Kunshan’s southern water-town advantage, Jinxi Town attracts young talent back to start businesses, exploring “coffee + guesthouse,” “coffee + ancient town” and “coffee + performance” models of farm-cultural-tourism integration, forming more than 70 varied “village cafés.”

Tiny coffee beans string together a complete industrial chain in Kunshan. In 2026 Kunshan’s coffee-roasting capacity rose to 200,000 tonnes, with 150,000 tonnes of warehousing laid out in parallel. At the Asia-Pacific green-coffee distribution center in Kunshan Comprehensive Bonded Zone, neatly stacked green beans come from over 30 countries and regions including Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania.

Shao Zhiqiang, deputy director of the Kunshan Comprehensive Bonded Zone Administration, explained the cluster effect of Kunshan’s coffee chain — local supporting rate exceeds 90%, with green-bean trade, platform trading, R&D roasting and brand sales all connected; within a half-hour drive you can gather every enterprise from green bean to finished coffee.

In 2025 Kunshan’s coffee industry revenue exceeded 10 billion yuan. Around the “coffee+” theme, Kunshan has built signature carriers such as a coffee-industry creative center and a coffee museum. This March, the Kunshan Coffee Industry College was established, with its first 50 full-time order-class students enrolled, planning to train over 300 professionals a year.

Small coffee carries big culture-tourism: anchored on coffee, Kunshan has found its own development path amid the culture-tourism integration wave. In 2025 Kunshan received 28.025 million visitors, up 16% from the previous year.

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