In a Deserted Old Mansion, a Ten-Year Coffee Dream

Standing on the old city wall in the Ximen Street area of Qujing, Yang Xingyi raises a hand and points: “That way is a city wall more than 600 years old; this way, fossil fish from hundreds of millions of years ago. I signed a ten-year lease, and the shop is called ‘Ten Years Coffee’. Ten years is like a scale, stringing together all the time in this old mansion.”

Born in 1988, the young man rented nearly 5,000 square metres of abandoned old mansion on the old street and spent a year turning it into a compound space that combines coffee, books, historical relics and local culture. By June this year it had received more than 30,000 visits.

In 2023, Yang Xingyi’s barbecue restaurant, bar and hotpot restaurant all ran at a loss. Under enormous pressure he happened to start drinking coffee, moving from sugar-laden lattes to pure pour-over, and gradually fell in love with the drink. Later he met barista Aken and hotel operator Kongkong; the three hit it off at once, rented the old mansion and opened a coffee shop.

The mansion’s roof tiles had all collapsed and the floorboards had been burned through. Yang Xingyi did not hire a professional construction team but did everything he could himself, “hand-crafting” the coffee space of his dreams. All the green beans in the shop are roasted in-house with Aken overseeing the whole process. The shop has also developed a distinctly Qujing “steamed er si latte”, whose layered texture has made it a well-known social-media hit. At weekends the place is as busy as a country fair, with customers travelling from Kunming, Xuanwei and Luoping just for a cup of coffee.

“We are not just selling a cup of coffee, but a stretch of time that belongs to the customer.” Yang Xingyi kept the city wall, old trees and Tianchi pond intact and strung the fossil fish, the ancient city wall, the old mansion and his “ten years” into a single timeline. “I want to use the scale of ten years to tell the story of this old mansion well, and to bring good Yunnan coffee to more people.”

Reporter: Sui Xin, Yunnan Daily – Yun News

Editor: Dai Fei

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