Dongshan Story: A Village Café Revives Lishan Village in Nanling

At a Glance (China Coffee Network): Anhui News Network — reporter Ruan Mengyue On an autumn morning at the foot of Dongshan, Lishan Village, Sanli Town, Nanling County, a little dog named "Xiaonian" wags its tail at…

Anhui News Network — reporter Ruan Mengyue

On an autumn morning at the foot of Dongshan, Lishan Village, Sanli Town, Nanling County, a little dog named “Xiaonian” wags its tail at the door of the “Dongshan Story” village café. Children chase it, their laughter drifting toward the bamboo forest with the stream.

Who would have thought that this rural café converted from an idle house became an instant hit upon opening during this year’s Spring Festival, receiving nearly 2,000 visitors a day at summer peak, with guests from Shanghai and Nanjing coming specifically for it.

Visitors not only come to drink coffee, but also ask the café owner about local specialties like chicken, ducks, wild tea, and honey, even wanting to dig bamboo shoots and pick chestnuts on the mountain themselves. Learning of the guests’ needs, owner Liu Tao partnered with villagers to launch farm-experience projects, and will hold a market on the lawn during the National Day holiday, letting villagers set up stalls to sell their own produce directly.

“In rural cultural tourism, we must not just think about our own profit, but let villagers have work and income right at their doorstep, so that as everyone’s life gets better, the business model is truly a success,” Liu Tao said. Driven by the café’s ripple effect, Lishan Village villagers increased income by over 50,000 yuan, earning a “cultural-tourism meal” at their doorstep.

“Dongshan Story” is a vivid microcosm of the cultural-tourism development of the Dongshan area in Sanli Town. Relying on ten-thousand-mu forest, over seven-thousand-mu primeval forest, and the ecological background of strontium-rich mountain springs, Lishan Village at the foot of Dongshan does its “green+” work well—building waterside boardwalks through beautiful-village construction, revitalizing an idle paper mill into a Qingxi Culture Exchange Center, restoring the ancient Qingxi paper craft, and linking red resources at Tutang to launch a “red-green” study tour route.

Across the town, Sanli Town lays out cultural-tourism integration with an area-based mindset: Dongshan activates eco-wellness and intangible-heritage study tours; the former New Fourth Army headquarters site at Tutang digs deep into red culture; Huixiangyuan builds a lodging destination with peonies and Hui-style architecture; Eling lays out a bonsai industry. As the Yunshan Road connecting Jing County’s Yunling is completed within the year, Sanli Town’s near-suburban advantage will be further highlighted.

As an important part of Nanling County’s southern mountain-rural lodging demonstration zone, Sanli Town is accelerating its integration into the “Yun’ai Mountain Dwelling Leisure Belt.” “We will continue to enrich the four-in-one format of ‘eco-lodging + tea-tourism consumption + red study tours + folk festivals,’ letting more ‘small-but-beautiful’ spots like ‘Dongshan Story’ grow into engines of rural revitalization,” introduced a relevant official of Sanli Town.

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