A place that evokes an ancient poet
Print Edition
EVERY morning at dawn during my stay in the remote village of Manzhuang in Yunnan Province, I am awakened by the cock’s crow.
Roosters and hens scuttle about the tops of walls, along rutted mountain roads and around farmhouses, but there’s one place you don’t find the fowl — on the steep, terraced mountainside of coffee plantations.
The farmers of Manzhuang, also roused by the crowing cocks, get up at daybreak to trudge up the mountain to pick coffee berries.
I join them, walking along narrow mountain paths with no safety barriers. I almost slip several times during the climb.
I am reminded of Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) poet Li Bai, who wrote in his poem “The Arduous Road to Shu:” “So dangerous, so high! It’s more difficult to go the way to Shu than going up to the sky.
The mountainside is densely forested. The trees create a semi-darkness that can be a bit eerie for a newcomer. To the coffee farmers, however, it’s just the daily pathway to work.
Sun Desheng, 45, has been a coffee farmer for 20 years.
“The processes now are much more complicated than in the past,” he tells me. “It’s demanding. Now I have a lower yield but high-quality beans.”
The villagers are hard-working and clever. After the Shanghai government helped the village build a coffee factory, they creatively made some of the equipment themselves, including adapting an old rice husking machine to husk coffee beans.
Due to the time difference, daytime in Manzhuang is longer than in Shanghai. When Shanghai residents are eating dinner after dark, it’s still bright in the village. The longer days are ideal for drying the coffee beans on the ground.
The mountain sunsets are gorgeous.
I eat with the villagers. The fare usually involves spicy local dishes. The specialty rice noodles, however, are tamer in taste. Fried insects like grasshoppers are also popular with the locals.
Insects abound in the area, which is a bit unsettling for a city girl. When I turn on the light in the bathroom at night, large moths flitter around. There are also spiders in my small guest bedroom.
In a dream, I envision the future of Yunnan coffee. Plantations everywhere and strategically located processing plants. The beans are bagged and delivered to points at home and abroad. Yunnan coffee has a growing reputation, and the lives of local farmers benefit from that.
Liu Daiyu, deputy director of Division of Trade and Business, Department of Commerce of Yunnan Province, tells me that Shanghai is a prime market for coffee beans. I’ll remember to have a cup of Yunnan coffee when I get home.
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