Yunnan Coffee, Where Flavors Blend

Dali, Yunnan, October 22 (China News Service) — Title: Yunnan Coffee, Where Flavors Blend

By China News Service reporters Cao Ziyun and Guan Xuezhao

By the shore of Erhai Lake in Dali, the picture window of Xindi Coffee frames the Cangshan mountains and Erhai Lake. Outside, tourists in ethnic dress come and go for photo shoots; inside, visitors from all corners of the country savor a wisp of rich aroma.

Yunnan’s coffee culture is quietly taking root; relying on the humble coffee bean, people have found a path to prosperity.

Xindi Coffee, rooted at the entrance of Xiamo Village in Dali City, blends Bai tie-dye and woodblock-print (Jiamao) elements into its latte art. Owner Du Jie explained that guests can directly feel Dali’s ethnic culture the moment they pick up a cup. In 2021, Du Jie and fellow villagers returned home to start a business, choosing Baoshan small-grain coffee and pairing it with Dali’s edible flowers to develop signature drinks, leading villagers to a “cultural-tourism livelihood.”

“We used to drift around elsewhere; now we find home is best after all.” Bai youth Zhang Yang is a barista at the shop. The growth of cultural tourism brought job opportunities and kept young people home. At Xindi Coffee, 80% of staff come from the village and surrounding hamlets, gathering Bai, Yi, Dai, and other ethnic groups.

A cup of rich coffee connects visitors from near and far, and also a stretch of coffee fields a hundred kilometers away.

Mangkuan Township in Longyang District, Baoshan, is one of the core growing areas for Yunnan small-grain coffee, home to 22 ethnic groups. “We live, produce, and develop industry together, celebrating the Torch Festival and Water-Splashing Festival as one big family,” said Wang Shuhui, Party branch secretary of Mangkuan Village.

In Mangkuan’s coffee fields, farmers share planting techniques and unify standards and cultivation, twisting scattered households into one rope.

Every harvest season, farmers of Yi, Dai, Lisu, and other ethnic groups help one another with labor, and the coffee fields become a bond of cooperation. The model of developing in groups means farmers no longer fight the market alone, and their bargaining power rises markedly.

Growing coffee well is one thing; selling it well is another. In earlier years, farmers only sold raw coffee beans — a business model with limited returns. To break the bottleneck, the locality built up coffee deep-processing industry. At the production workshop of Yunnan Jinglan Tropical Crops Technology Co., Ltd., staff process beans into high-value-added products such as freeze-dried powder and cold-brew concentrate. The enterprise’s annual processing capacity reaches 16,000 tonnes, stably lifting the incomes of over a thousand surrounding farming households.

Today, Yunnan-processed finished coffee not only supplies the domestic market but also rides the China–Laos Railway toward Southeast Asia and sells as far as Europe, North America, and Africa. Historically, the Southern Silk Road connected the borderlands with the interior; today, this ever-extending coffee industry chain binds all ethnic groups more closely in the economy, hand in hand toward a broad international market.

Li Yongqiang, deputy director of the Baoshan Ethnic and Religious Affairs Bureau, said the extension of the coffee industry chain is not only an economic bond but also deepens understanding and builds identity among different ethnic groups through division of labor and cooperation. From planting to processing to consumption, the single coffee bean strings together a vivid chain of exchange, communication, and integration among all ethnic groups. (End)

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