The biggest regret for the villagers of Xuemi Mountain in Liming Township, Ning'er County, Yunnan Province was that they couldn't afford to drink a cup of their own specialty coffee while guarding the good soil and water in the misty mountains.
Xuemi Mountain is a village group in Xingle Village, Liming Township. It is nearly 100 kilometers away from Ning'er County and takes about 3 hours by car. It is a typical remote mountain village. The high-altitude, foggy, and primitive mountainous climate provides unique conditions for coffee cultivation.
Baked coffee beans. Photo by Dong Jinhan
Since the large-scale coffee planting in Pu'er in 1988, every household in Xuemi Mountain has been associated with coffee trees. However, for decades, the fresh fruits picked by villagers have only undergone simple peeling and drying in the village's primary processing plant before being sold in bulk to enterprises in other areas, with a single industrial model and extremely low added value. During the low period of the coffee industry from 2013 to 2014, the lowest purchase price for fresh fruits dropped to a few cents per kilogram, causing villagers to suffer losses for years. They had to endure the pain of cutting down trees and planting other crops; When the market recovers, we will replant. Between repeated cuts, the industry has never been able to form a stable scale.
It was not until the returning young man Pu Jianwei returned to the village that this long dormant deep mountain coffee industry chain was truly revitalized.
After graduating from university in 2009, Pu Jianwei worked successively in Kunming and Ning'er state-owned enterprises. For over a decade, urban life has been peaceful and dignified, but it has never been able to make him feel at ease – he has always been concerned about the land of his hometown and the coffee grown in the village for decades. Watching the mountains and fields that his ancestors worked hard to protect become cheap raw materials, he made up his mind to return home and cultivate the specialty coffee track.
In 2024, Pu Jianwei registered and established Ning'er Xiaohei Uncle Coffee Farm, creating a 30 acre standardized ecological coffee garden on Xuemi Mountain. On the basis of traditional Katim varieties, high-quality varieties such as Guixia, Tiepika, Huangboban, and Sachim have been introduced. We implement refined management throughout the entire process of planting and maintenance, insisting on manual screening and natural drying of the original ecology to maximize the preservation of the original flavor of coffee beans.
Pu Jianwei is manually picking and drying coffee beans. Photo by Dong Jinhan
By 2025, the farm will achieve large-scale sales of high-quality finished coffee products, filling the gap of "only producing raw materials, no deep processing, and no local brand" in Xuemi Mountain Coffee. At present, our products cover two major categories: roasted coffee beans and hanging ear coffee, as well as two core varieties: Katim and Guixia. We use three processes of washing, sun drying, and honey treatment to adapt to different flavor preferences.
To give deep mountain coffee a unique local flavor, Pu Jianwei teamed up with his university classmates and the head of a Shenzhen original studio to jointly create an original local brand – "Yangluguaer Coffee". The brand packaging abandons industrial printing and adopts the traditional Pu erh out of print woodcut craftsmanship. The entire process is handmade and stamped, and each package is a unique handmade product, just like every carefully selected deep mountain coffee bean, simple and precious, with its own warmth.
The construction of the entire industrial chain enables the value of local products to soar. In the past, villagers relied solely on selling fresh fruits, with an average annual income of only 60-70000 yuan per household; After the farm achieved independent processing and sales, the added value increased significantly, and the average annual income per household exceeded 30000 yuan. The farm has also employed more than ten local villagers and returning young people nearby, achieving a virtuous cycle of one person returning home to start a business, driving an increase in income for the masses, and activating local industries.
Pu Jianwei is carrying out manual weeding work in the coffee field. Photo by Dong Jinhan
From a stable employment to taking root in the mountains, Pu Jianwei returned home with a gentle yet firm determination, fulfilling his local sentiment and rewriting the fate of a local industry. A small coffee bean, carrying the cultivation and expectations of several generations of people in Xuemi Mountain, has undergone a complete transformation from planting, management, processing, roasting, to finished product sales under the innovative empowerment of "New Farmers", truly achieving a magnificent transformation from seeds to cups.
Returning to one's hometown and revitalizing one's career; Revitalize the village with one industry, light up a place. In the continuous green mountains of Ning'er, more and more young people returning home are rooted in their hometowns, deeply cultivating the mountains and fields, activating old industries with new thinking, and allowing good things from deep mountains to come out of the mountains. With the scorching power of youth, they are writing a vivid answer to rural revitalization. (Hu Zunhui, Dong Jinhan)