Twelve Cups of Guiyang: Four Seasons of Extraction at the 2026 Coffee Expo

At a Glance (China Coffee Network): On the afternoon of September 24, the "One Cup of Guiyang, Four Seasons of Extraction — Twelve Cups of Guiyang" co-creation showcase took the main stage of the 2026 Guiyang Intern…

On the afternoon of September 24, the “One Cup of Guiyang, Four Seasons of Extraction — Twelve Cups of Guiyang” co-creation showcase took the main stage of the 2026 Guiyang International Coffee Expo. Twelve cross-field ambassadors paired one-to-one with twelve local baristas presented twelve city signature drinks according to spring, summer, autumn and winter. More worth chewing over than the flavors in the cups is what these twelve coffees want to say on Guiyang’s behalf.

Guiyang is a “special” city — it grows not a single coffee bean, yet more than 3,000 cafés have sprung up; it is not a traditional producing region, yet it has produced several world champion baristas. Coffee here grows out of the city’s everyday life. That is precisely the starting point of “Twelve Cups of Guiyang”: a city of coffee cannot have only “the bustle of drinking coffee,” it must also have “the confidence to make coffee” — its own flavor expression, cultural roots and industrial ecosystem.

So these twelve cups were never standardized products from the outset. Twelve perspectives, twelve city stories, twelve sincere responses to this city. Their value lies not in the level of technique but in a plain idea: let coffee become a carrier of Guiyang culture, and let everyone present become a co-creator of the city’s flavor. The showcase was cut into four groups of “demos” by season, in the sense of a “sample” — three cups per season, not to define a season completely but to approach the shadow of a city from different angles.

Look at what these twelve cups are expressing and the answer is hidden in the ingredient lists. Cili (Rosa roxburghii), litsea, white sour soup, Tongren matcha, Zhaotong apples, Guizhou chili, chestnuts, osmanthus, perilla — layer after layer of Guizhou’s mountains and lanes, carried one by one into the cup. Here coffee becomes a translator for a city: letting outsiders come to know Guizhou’s sour soup, dipping sauces and green hills and clear waters in a single cup, and letting Guizhou people living away from home taste homesickness in one sip. Pushing Guizhou’s produce and distinctive agricultural products onto a bigger stage through a cup of coffee is an unspoken wish shared by many of the baristas.

More moving still are the private thoughts poured into the cups. One cup, “150,000 Kilometres,” comes from a barista’s experience of living away from home and driving 150,000 km; that pinch of Guizhou chili is the tie to home one cannot forget however far one travels. One named “Break the Ginger and Tangerine” wants to hand a little courage to break through to someone in a hard place. “Mountain Village Brew” draws on Guizhou’s gate-blocking wine custom of welcoming guests. And one is simply called “Good Luck Arrives with Ginger,” handing a wish to a stranger. Here coffee is no longer just a drink, but ordinary people’s expression of life and their confession to this city.

The ambassadors’ words punctured the layer of meaning shared by all twelve cups: “Travel the length and breadth of the land, and the most intoxicating beauty is colorful Guizhou”; “Five hundred years on, look to Yunnan and Guizhou surpassing Jiangnan.” Mountains once cut this place off; now all things grow. Coffee that belongs to Guiyang ought to carry its own mountain air, its everyday street-life warmth and its cultural confidence.

This is not a contest of craft, but an attempt by Guiyang to move from “a city that drinks coffee” toward “a city that creates coffee culture.” Perhaps after today one of these cups will become a shop’s signature, one pairing will become Guiyang’s new taste label, one story will be told again and again and passed down. More importantly, it lets Guiyang coffee, for the first time and in its own way, take a seat at the table to speak with the world.

Baidu – Dongjing News (official account of Guizhou Radio and Television Station)

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