Beijing, CHINA / Storyteller / May 30, 2026 / Once called "cough syrup" when it was first introduced to China, coffee has now swelled into a compound industry in China exceeding 350 billion yuan ($51.5 billion) a year, as of 2025, showing it has long become a daily commodity for countless Chinese.
Smelling roasted and tasting slightly bitter and tangy yet leaving a lingering sweetness, coffee has evolved from its roots in Ethiopia to become one of the most globalized beverages today.
Be it a single-shot bitter espresso or a venti-sized sweet vanilla latte, the taste of a cup of coffee is always closely tied to the local customs and ways of life of a place.
Yet, when its global spread made it to China, apart from the capital-nurtured coffee giants, the diverse regional cultures here gave it a newfound "one city, one taste" twist.
From this has evolved the concept of COFFEE - a City's Original Flavor and Fusion of lifestyles that shape its urban Experience and Exchange - leading to deeper cultural meaning in China beyond the drink itself.
Original flavor On a weekday morning, while Zhang Fan, the owner of a coffee shop in Zhengdong Town, Pu'er City, Southwest China's Yunnan Province, was writing the name of a specialty coffee called "Zhengdong Sunset" on a blackboard menu, over in Yanji, Northeast China's Jilin Province, another coffee shop owner, Cui Fenghua, was preparing ingredients for her two signature drinks: the "Ginseng Americano" and "Frozen Pear Latte." Zooming out, Zhang's and Cui's coffee shops are located along an almost diagonal line across the map of China.
One is in a small town in the southwest, deeply rooted in Dai and Hani ethnic cultures; the other is a small city within the Yanbian Korean autonomous prefecture, rich in Korean ethnic traditions.
Despite being over 4,000 kilometers apart, coffee has taken root in each place, blossoming with locally born flavors.
Described as a "coffee cocktail," Zhang's Zhengdong Sunset blends proportioned grapefruit juice, blood orange juice, and coffee essence.
Adding fruit juice to coffee drinks is nothing new - many chain coffee brands have similar offerings.
What truly sets Zhang's specialty apart is the coffee bean behind it - a bean called "Zhengdong Catimor." The Catimor bean originally came from Portugal and was introduced to Yunnan Province in the late 1980s.
One of its core growing areas is Zhengdong Town.
By adapting to the region's unique climate, local producers have gradually refined the Catimor bean's cultivation techniques and processing methods over the years.
The bean's taste has also begun to mirror Yunnan's natural conditions itself - shedding its heavy muddy notes for warm floral and fruity tones, rounded out with a hint of sour-sweetness.
"Inside a single bean lies the information of a place's environment, climate, cultural characteristics and more," local Yunnan coffee expert Liu Haifeng told the Global Times.
"Coffee," she added, "can present a regional culture through taste." Unlike the bright fruit and floral palate of China's Southwest, Northeast-located barista Cui fuses local ginseng into her brew to create a deeper and richer taste.
When the ground ginseng granules mix into the dark coffee, the earthy bitterness of both herb and bean are amplified.
Sip slowly and a returning sweetness rises beneath it.
Such a unique recipe is more than just an exploration of ingredients' flavors.
It is also rooted in the local Korean ethnic people's long praised tradition of using medicinal and edible herbs.
In 2025, the Yanbian Korean autonomous prefecture officially released and implemented local dietary care guidelines, listing 56 Korean ethnic medicinal ingredients, including ginseng, as "homologous food and medicine" materials.
"Ginseng coffee is like a symbol of our ethnic culture," Cui told the Global Times.
"Outsiders might find it 'odd,' but for us, it's as indispensable as water." Other than ginseng coffee, Cui has also developed another drink using frozen pears, a fruit specialty of Northeast China, as a "Plan B" for tourists who "really can't stomach ginseng coffee." "At least they can still get a taste of Yanji and savor our culture," Cui noted.
Fusion of lifestyles You would think the frigid climate of Yanji would surely rule out coffee, a crop from the tropics.
However, this small city's coffee scene is booming with more than 1,000 coffee shops.
Such a surprising contrast is actually rooted in a local hybrid lifestyle.
As a border city, Yanji has long served as a window connecting trade between China and Russia.
By the end of the last century, instant coffee made in Russia gradually made its way into ordinary Yanji households.
"That was my first cup of coffee," Cui told the Global Times.
"To be honest, it smelled good, tasted strange and was very interesting." Lively cross-boarder exchanges brought population mobility.
Following China's reform and opening-up, a part of Yanji's local Korean ethnic population left for work in South Korea.
When they later returned home, they brought back South Korean-style coffee culture with them.
Nowadays, while Yanji's coffee culture has stopped chasing foreign flavors, the cultural fusion ingrained in the local lifestyle is still inspiring the local coffee industry to embrace diverse influences.
The border city is not the only one that reveals the inclusive nature of Chinese coffee culture.
Located in South China's Guangdong Province, Taishan city has been a major node on the Maritime Silk....
