On a stage in Shanwei, Guangdong Province, 66-year-old Xiang Mingxiang described a dream that had occupied nearly half of his life. Even before he spoke, his suntanned face and mud-caked hiking boots told a story.
Hailing from Taiwan Province, Xiang arrived in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, in 1992. Aged 32, he was a businessman carrying a leather briefcase full of design drawings. His talent for handicrafts enabled him to establish two factories. For six years, the factories generated annual revenues of tens of millions of yuan. Then labour costs rose. Profit margins halved. In 1998, a Taiwan trade delegation introduced him to Luo Xia, a local official in Haifeng County, Shanwei, who promised him lower operating costs. Xiang invested six million yuan in a new factory branch.
The two men became close friends. One day in 2001, Luo took Xiang to a barren hillside near a reservoir. He bent down, scooped up a handful of soil, and explained that introducing modern farming techniques from Taiwan could transform the land. Xiang listened.
His wife called the idea reckless. Friends reminded him of his previous failures in agriculture: an olive tree project had lost three million yuan, and a pig farm was shut down due to water protection regulations, costing another five million yuan.
The turning point came in 2016 when Xiang read that Starbucks was planning to open 500 new stores across China. This reminded him of Taiwan's well-established Gukeng coffee region. "If Taiwan can grow good coffee, why can't Shanwei?" he reasoned. His idea was met with skepticism, but Xiang was convinced that with the right variety selection and careful management, an exotic crop could flourish in unfamiliar soil.
Xiang spent a month visiting coffee farms in the Gukeng area of Taiwan, filling notebooks with observations on pruning, fertilizing, and controlling diseases. Seedlings were then shipped to Shanwei. The early batches produced bitter fruit. Yields remained stubbornly low. Xiang consulted experts from Yunnan. To avoid long commutes, he moved into a 70-square-meter shack in the mountains. Red ant bites, bee stings and thorn scratches became routine.
In the summer of 2019, he spotted red coffee cherries on the branches, indicating that a locally adapted variety of coffee had successfully taken root in Shanwei. The trees had matured within three years, thanks to the region's abundant rainfall and sunshine. Annual production now stands at around 5,000 kilograms of specialty coffee beans, selling at 500 yuan per kilogram, with demand from buyers in Dongguan, Shenzhen and Shanghai outstripping supply.
Xiang was a constant experimenter, adjusting fermentation times and comparing sun-dried, washed and honey-processed methods. He even fermented beans with pineapple and lemon to create a signature fruit-forward profile inspired by Taiwan-grown varieties, which won silver at an industry competition in Shanghai. It took three years of careful tending under shade nets before the prized Geisha variety, which is notoriously sensitive to temperature and moisture, successfully produced fruit.
His son, Xiang Jia, was once skeptical, but later earned an international barista certification in Shanghai. Together, father and son now complete the coffee journey together—one in the field and the other behind the counter—taking customers from seed to cup.
Since then, the local government has paved the road leading to Xiang's plantation and erected a giant coffee cup sculpture at the entrance. The Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences has also designated the plantation a science and technology cooperation base.
Author | Feng Huiting
Photo | Nanfang Plus
