Striding Toward the 15th Five-Year Plan, Marching to the Future | In the Aroma of Coffee, the "Oil City" Is Reborn

Brief (coffeeyo.com): In Daqing — China’s “Oil City” — a homegrown coffee brand called Mengka has turned the city’s mammoth cultural totem into a thriving local IP, revitalizing idle assets and injecting new momentum into cultural-tourism consumption. The story of one cup of coffee traces how a resource-based city pursues a light-touch path to transformation.

A Daqing resident, Gong Xiaonan, starts her day with a cup of local coffee “Mengka.”

At 8:32, a cool breeze passes through the Soviet-style covered corridor of Jingyuan Park in Ranghulu District, and the grinder at Mengka’s Xicheng Jingyuan store is already humming. Before barista Yang Shuai has even tidied his workstation, Gong rushes in. “One Americano, to go,” she orders with familiarity, her gaze drifting to the lotus pond beneath the white walls and dark tiles outside.

Had this been before, the scene would have seemed a bit out of place. Daqing, this “industrial hard-core” city, seemed far removed from the soft, romantic, artistic vibe of coffee. Yet last spring, the first Mengka store opened at the Daqing Museum. Twenty days ago, Jingyuan Park — carrying the memories of generations of Daqing residents — reopened after months of renovation. The simultaneously unveiled Mengka Xicheng Jingyuan store broke 36,000 yuan in first-day sales and recently sells more than 1,000 cups a day.

In just over a year, Mengka has grown to more than a dozen stores in Daqing. The city has not only revitalized idle assets and “grown” its own local coffee brand, but also built a “city living room” that hosts exchange and nurtures creativity, injecting new momentum into cultural-tourism consumption.

This is not merely the story of one cup of coffee “breaking out,” but a vivid example of how a resource-based city seeks a lightweight breakthrough in its transformation.

A “Brainstorm” on a Business Trip Gave Birth to Mengka

Mengka’s birth was quite characteristic of Daqing — crisp, decisive, with a bit of the “get it done” Iron Man spirit.

Rewind to last spring, when Zhu Jianhe, chairman of Daqing City Development Group, had a “brainstorming session” on urban development with municipal leaders and culture-tourism officials during a business trip. The topic was concrete: what kind of carrier does Daqing need to lightweight-ly fill the gaps in urban life scenarios and sustain the long-term governance of urban renewal?

Everyone naturally thought of coffee — an entry point that fits young people’s work and life needs and holds great consumption potential. As the excavation site of landmark paleontological fossils, the “mammoth” is a cultural totem etched deep into this land — weighty and ancient enough. Coffee, by contrast, represents youth, fluidity, and infinite possibility. This proposal instantly opened everyone’s thinking.

Binding the mammoth tightly with coffee was precisely Mengka’s original creative logic. Then, who would do the project? How to balance investment and returns? These were further questions. Zhu Jianhe stated on the spot: “The mission of the City Development Group is to develop together with the city and make Daqing better. We’ll take this on.”

On May 1, 2025, the first Mengka opened at the Daqing Museum. From decision to launch took only 19 days. The rush of ancient atmosphere and coffee’s roasty aroma made Mengka “break out” the moment it debuted. Barista Zheng Yanqiao said one customer placed 15 online orders in a single month. The slogan carrying Northeast bravado — “Be a go-getter, drink Mengka” — quickly became a trendy catchphrase among young people.

Mengka became a successful exploration and practice by a city-level state-owned enterprise rooted in urban resources to build a local cultural IP.

Awakening “Sleeping Assets”: From Old Wharf to City Living Room

If the first store was a trial, then the rebirth of the Binzhou Courtyard in Sartu District marked the real beginning of Mengka showing its strength and ambition.

Step into Binzhou Courtyard and a lake lies beside you, weeping willows swaying, the atmosphere of quiet, unhurried years maxed out. Enter the Mengka glass house: look up to see raw concrete slabs, underfoot is grayish-green cement, and in the corner the gleam of a gramophone’s brass horn reflects the record shelf nearby. Here, every breath is the everyday warmth where old time and new life collide.

“This used to be an old wharf idle for years; the old office dormitories and canteen had long been abandoned,” said Liu Yu, board secretary of the City Development Group and manager of Guoxin Company, who drove and witnessed the transformation throughout. The group did not tear down and rebuild, but insisted on “micro-renewal, light renovation” — preserving the building’s skeleton, then injecting the formats of coffee, baking, and cultural-creative goods to create a new cultural-tourism consumption scene for visitors and residents.

Li, a freelancer living near Binzhou Lake, has long treated the Mengka Binzhou Courtyard store as his “outdoor studio.” He said: “For me, this is not just a corner to rest, but a source of inspiration.”

The City Development Group avoids large-scale demolition and construction; all projects, from design and development to operation, are handled by the state-owned enterprise, revitalizing idle assets through a “light-touch intervention” approach. This “embroidery-work” not only saves costs but also preserves the city’s memory. This year, Jingyuan Park, with 35 years of history, followed the same principle: preserving the essence of Soviet-style garden design, updating water, electricity, and heating infrastructure, and using the arrival of a cafe to drive the overall value uplift of the surrounding 20,000-square-meter area.

Folding a cup of coffee into the grand narrative of urban renewal — behind this is the state-owned enterprise’s deep elevation of its urban-operation thinking. Zhu Jianhe said: “When state-owned enterprises invest, they must count the commercial ledger, but even more the people’s-livelihood ledger and the city ledger. What we do is resonate culture-tourism integration with urban renewal at the same frequency, cultivate sustainable new industrial momentum, and drive the city’s transformation and upgrading.”

The Infinite Creativity of “Coffee+” and the Whole City’s “Uplift”

In Mengka’s dictionary, coffee is only the lead-in; the real headliner is “coffee+.” At the museum store, ancient civilization embraces coffee aroma; at the hospital branch, for patient groups, it innovatively launched drinks such as the “Five-Black Latte.”

“We insist on ‘translating’ Daqing’s historical culture and industrial resources into products that young people are willing to share on their own initiative,” introduced Tong Xin, a frontline manager at Mengka. Petroleum ice cream, freshly baked bread from Mr. Mammoth Bakery, eco-bags patterned with mammoths — a complete cultural-creative chain has quietly taken shape; “coffee+” turns one-way city sightseeing into a complete closed loop of “touring, consuming, relaxing, and buying cultural-creative goods.”

Breaking out rapidly in just over a year also reflects the “uplift” of Mengka by multiple city departments. A relevant official from Daqing’s Culture, Radio, Tourism and Sports Bureau said: “We dig deep into the mammoth cultural core, let Mengka appear at exhibitions such as the Harbin Fair, link official media with a self-media influencer matrix, and tell the story of coffee-tourism integration well. Another local IP, ‘Daqing Xiaotie,’ has also entered the stores, enabling the two IPs to complement and cross-drain each other.”

Today, to step beyond Daqing, Mengka has taken concrete steps — its Harbin project is advancing intensively. “What we export outward is not just coffee and cultural-creative goods, but the experience Daqing has explored of empowering public-space revitalization with a local cultural IP,” Zhu Jianhe said in a case-sharing session on urban renewal at the Provincial Party School, expressing hope that Mengka can provide a reference solution for more state-owned enterprises’ transformation and upgrading.

From “Oil City” to “Tour City” — as the mammoth’s long trunk curls up the mellow aroma of coffee, Daqing’s romance is so hard-core, yet so tender.

Source: Heilongjiang Daily (reporters Sun Hao and Ding Yan).

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