Unlocking four ways to play at the 2nd Star Sand Africa Coffee Carnival — an extraordinary 'fei' holiday in Star Sand

Changsha Evening News, Palm Changsha, October 3 (All-media reporter She Qianwen, Star Sand Times reporter Song Binbin) — On October 3, stepping into the northern lawn of Songya Lake, the autumn breeze carried the roasted aroma of coffee beans. Before the well-arranged market stalls, many citizens sat on lounge chairs with freshly made coffee, sipping while enjoying the autumn lake view—the scene relaxed and lively.

This was the site of the 2nd Star Sand Africa Coffee Carnival. As a sub-event of the 5th Changsha Tourism Development Conference, and a key segment of Changsha County’s “Come to Star Sand, Always a Good Market” 2026 golden-autumn consumption season, the event uses coffee as the core medium to link industry showcases, cultural-tourism experiences, market consumption, and urban roaming. Through four sections—”one exhibition, one market, one workshop, one photo”—it builds a lakeside carnival blending China-Africa economic-trade depth with urban lifestyle, turning Songya Lake’s ecological resources into a city-cultural-tourism scene that is experienceable, consumable, and roamable.

Coffee Aroma by the Lake: Four Sections Unlock New Coffee Experiences

This carnival innovatively launched the four sections of “one exhibition, one market, one workshop, one photo,” with diverse scenes rolling out in turn, letting citizens and visitors feel the multifaceted charm of Changsha County’s coffee culture in one stop.

The “China-Africa Coffee Bridge · Airport-Opening Exhibition” takes a single African coffee bean as its narrative entry point, stringing together a trade journey across mountains and seas. Departing from African origins, relying on air-logistics channels, it travels thousands of miles to arrive at Changsha Huanghua International Airport. The tiny bean’s long voyage vividly tells the opening story of Changsha County leveraging its airport advantage to connect with the world.

With accessible, novel, and engaging displays, the exhibition makes tangible core content such as international route layouts, air-logistics development, multimodal transport systems, the “five-zone overlay” advantage, and global industry linkages. It transforms the abstract development concept of “airport opening” into a viewable, sensible, and readable real scene, letting citizens and visitors intuitively understand the opening trajectory and vigorous vitality of Changsha County’s external outreach. A coffee bean’s ten-thousand-mile trek and a cup of mellow coffee taking root are a vivid urban microcosm of Changsha County anchoring itself at the airport hub and connecting the world in both directions.

The “Lakeside Coffee Market Life Fair” uses a rich coffee atmosphere as the carrier to showcase the local coffee industry strength of Changsha County and even Hunan, letting distinctive aromas permeate the city’s leisure spaces. The event gathers well-known leading coffee brands such as San Dun Ban (Three Quarter) and San Dou Ke from the Hunan Coffee Industrial Park, while also assembling the distinctive “village café” brands from the county’s towns and subdistricts, moving the new coffee lifestyles hidden in mountains, fields, and village lanes onto the lakeside lawn of Songya Lake, achieving a two-way blend of urban and rural coffee culture.

The site also introduced a happiness café co-created by the welfare lottery, unlocking new coffee-consumption scenes. Inside the market, premium coffee beans, professional equipment, baked desserts, and cultural-creative merchandise are complete, covering diverse lifestyle content such as coffee consumption, leisure experiences, and trendy IP. It gathers multiple formats—professional boutique coffee, rural specialty coffee, crossover innovative coffee—building a one-stop coffee-trend experience that brings niche coffee culture into everyday public life.

The “Hands-on Coffee Fun Workshop” focuses on DIY experiences, making coffee more than just tasting. On-site courses in pour-over, latte art, and coffee blind tasting are offered, along with creative projects like cup doodling and eco-friendly coffee-ground crafts. Changsha County’s distinctive intangible-cultural-heritage workshops also moved in, letting visitors join for free and feel the unique charm where coffee culture meets Hunan-Xiang intangible heritage through grinding, hand-painting, and crafting.

Passport to Roam the City: Bringing Coffee Aroma into Star Sand’s Streets

The “Urban Roaming Life Passport” is a highlight of this carnival, extending the on-site buzz into countywide cultural-tourism roaming. This time 5,000 coffee-life passports were released in limited quantities, adopting a three-tier gameplay of market check-ins, themed-route challenges, and countywide final clearance, building a consumption loop of “carnival launch — passport traffic draw — task-driven — benefit-incentivized — countywide cultural-tourism roaming.”

Collecting 4 stamps on-site lets you redeem a basic gift pack, including a custom tote bag, the coffee-life passport containing a 30-yuan no-threshold coupon, themed postcards, and a custom mini fridge magnet. The 4 stamps can be collected by visiting the airport-opening exhibition, consuming coffee drinks at the market, or engaging in brand interactions.

Citizens can freely choose the coffee-themed exploration routes recommended in the passport, heading to county cafés, cultural-tourism spots, and distinctive merchants to check in and collect stamps. Completing one route’s 4 stamps redeems upgraded merch such as 5 Americano experience vouchers, a route-exclusive canvas bag, a baseball cap, and a ceramic coffee cup.

Completing any 2 of the 4 themed routes plus the on-site 4 stamps—presenting 12 stamps—lets you go to the county commerce bureau’s designated redemption point to add the ultimate stamp and unlock the grand prize. In addition, citizens who purchase 1 home or 1 vehicle in Changsha County before October 30 can directly clear and receive the grand prize. The grand prize is a 500-yuan no-threshold consumption voucher, limited to 300, first come first served.

Relying on Songya Lake’s quality ecological foundation and breaking out through the coffee IP, this event organically fuses China-Africa economic-trade culture, county cultural-tourism resources, and distinctive consumption scenes. Anchored to the 5th Changsha Tourism Development Conference’s philosophy of “hosting conferences to revitalize the city, hosting to benefit the people,” and implementing Changsha County’s 2026 golden-autumn consumption-season theme “Come to Star Sand, Always a Good Market,” it gathers crowds with a lakeside coffee feast, drives on-site market consumption, and leads county scenic spots and distinctive merchants to jointly attract traffic—continuously enriching Changsha County’s consumption supply, activating countywide consumption vitality, and letting citizens and visitors savor a cup of coffee and roam a city by the shore of Songya Lake.

Reprint notice: This article is reprinted and translated from Changsha Evening News / Palm Changsha (reporters She Qianwen, Song Binbin). English version compiled by coffeeyo.com for overseas readers. Copyright belongs to the original publisher and authors.