Chao News Client Reporter Xu Yuyang
At 10:00 on July 17th, 70 year old Zhou Wei walked into a rural caf é located at the foot of Baocun Mountain in Wuyi County. She skillfully pressed the switches one by one, and the coffee machine and grinder started running. With the sound of grinding beans and cicadas chirping, accompanied by the floating aroma of coffee throughout the house, Zhou Wei officially opened her day of business.
Former village grandmother Zhou Wei has now become a "gold medal barista" in rural cafes. Respondent provided pictures
This year's May Day holiday is the busiest. Every day, we have to receive two to three hundred tourists and make hundreds of cups of coffee. If the weather is good on weekends, there will also be hundreds of tourists coming up to drink coffee. There are also foreign students from Ningbo and Jinhua who came in groups to drink the coffee I made. "Faced with the sudden popularity, Zhou Weinu felt a little embarrassed. From a "left behind grandmother" to a popular ancient village barista, at the age of seventy, she staged a "silver haired comeback" in a deep mountain ancient village in Wuyi.
Zhou Weinu hopes to attract more and more tourists to come to Shanxiabao Village and love it through her coffee and introductions. Respondent provided pictures
However, what many people don't know is that before this year, Zhou Weinu had never drunk coffee, let alone made coffee. Zhou Weinu said that she used to be like other elderly people who stayed in the village, doing farm work and watching TV at home every day to pass the time. The turning point occurred two years ago when my nephew, who was originally doing business in Hangzhou, decided to return to his hometown to run a village caf é and warmly invited Zhou Weinu to serve as the "chef" and "head of the internal affairs department". Since arriving at the village caf é, Zhou Weinu, who is full of curiosity about new things, often watches her nephew make coffee while memorizing the steps while cooking and doing odd jobs. After the coffee shop closed, Zhou Weinu practiced making coffee with the remaining materials of the day. Gradually, the taste of the coffee she made became more and more stable, and the types of coffee she could make also increased.
On the first day of this year's Qingming Festival holiday, the small shop suddenly welcomed a large number of customers. My nephew urgently needed to go out to purchase materials and was exhausted. Zhou Wei's daughter volunteered to be a "temporary barista". Unexpectedly, the guests not only praised her for making delicious coffee, but also posted a video of Zhou Weinu making coffee online, receiving a large number of likes and comments. From then on, barista Zhou Weinu officially took up her job. In just a few months, she proficiently mastered the making techniques of six or seven types of coffee, including American style, latte, and coconut latte. Her most skilled one was undoubtedly the Xuan Lian latte made with her own Wuyi Xuan Lian.
The sweet and fragrant Xuan Lian coffee is the "king of ordering" in the village cafes. Respondent provided pictures
Every summer, Zhou Weinu plants a pond of Wuyi Xuanlian in her backyard. After harvesting, dry and grind the lotus seeds into delicate lotus paste, add rock sugar to create a natural sweetness, and blend it into freshly ground coffee. The lotus fragrance is clear and smooth, and the coffee is slightly bitter. It is a unique mountain and wild flavor that belongs only to the ancient villages of Wuyi.
After tasting Xuan Lian Latte, Liam, an international student from Kenya, gave it a lot of likes and was pleasantly surprised: "My hometown is rich in coffee, but I have never tasted a combination of lotus seeds and coffee. It's really novel. The sweet herbal blend with coffee aroma is particularly delicious
Removing her identity as a barista, Zhou Weinu remains the "gold medal guide" of Gucun. The oldest house in our village is six or seven hundred years old, and only two people holding hands on the pillar in front of the door can embrace each other. In her free time, she always enthusiastically leads tourists through ancient alleys, recounting the historical stories of century old houses.
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