The First Coffee House on the Chinese Mainland around 1836, a Danish man, Peter Ostrovsky opened the first coffee house "North Wind and the Sea" near the Thirteen Factories(Shisan Hang) trading district in Guangzhou.
Guangzhou was China's only trading port with the West at the time.
In 1757, Emperor Qianlong closed the foreign trade functions of other coastal ports, leaving only the Yuehai Pass in Guangdong as a trading port with the West.
In other words, Guangzhou was the only legitimate foreign trade base open to the West by the Qing dynasty.
This "one-port trade" system lasted for 85 years until the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842.
In addition, Cheung Chau Island in Huangpu Harbor was called "Danish Island" because it was primarily inhabited by Danes.
This was Guangzhou's first coffee shop, and also China's first coffee shop.
At that time, Guangzhou, as the Qing government's only port open to foreign trade, was at the forefront of Sino-foreign exchanges.
Early trading partners of the Thirteen Lines included Western European countries such as the Netherlands, Great Britain, Denmark, and Spain.
Furthermore, Denmark had already established a trading post in Guangzhou as early as 1731 (Nanyueguyidao).
A former "Danish trading post" was located on the west side of "Dexing North Street" in the Thirteen Lines district.
At that time in Europe, this coffee house was a social hub where merchants would discuss trade and exchange information. It catered more to Western merchants gathered in Guangzhou than to Chinese customers.
For Western merchants, including Danes who had long-term assignments in Guangzhou, a coffee shop that allowed them to recreate the lifestyles of their homeland was a natural extension of their trading activities.
At the time, coffee was called "black liquor" by the Chinese. It was written that "There is black liquor available; foreigners drink it after meals, and it is said that this sake aids digestion.". Therefore, it seems safe to say that this shop was geared towards Westerners.
The 1866 book Zaoyang Fanshu included the transliteration “磕肥” for coffee and described roasting, grinding, and brewing methods.
By the late Qing period, cities such as Tianjin and Shanghai already had commercial coffeehouses.
And that during the Republican era coffeehouses and café spaces became more common in major cities.
The exact year coffee was introduced to Yunnan varies slightly across sources.
One account holds that in 1892, a French missionary named Tian Deneng brought coffee seedlings from Vietnam to Zhukula Village in Binchuan County, Dali, Yunnan, planting them behind the wall of a Catholic church.
Other accounts place the date at 1902 or 1904.
However, there is a broad consensus, Zhukula Village in Binchuan County, Yunnan, was the earliest site of coffee cultivation on the China.
And the French missionary Tian Deneng was the key figure who brought coffee there.
A French missionary planted the first coffee tree on the Chinese mainland in Zhukula Village, Binchuan.
During this period, coffee cultivation was extremely small in scale, serving mainly as an ornamental plant or for the personal consumption of missionaries.
If Yunnan is the starting point of coffee cultivation in China, then Shanghai is the cradle of Chinese coffee consumption culture.
From the 1920s to the 1940s, the number of coffee houses in Shanghai's concession areas surged along with the growing foreign population, making Shanghai the earliest Chinese city to engage with Western coffee culture.
Returned overseas students, foreigners, and members of the literary and artistic world frequented coffee houses on North Sichuan Road, Avenue Joffre, and Nanjing Road, transforming coffee houses into important venues for socializing and intellectual exchange.
The most famous of these was the "Gongfei Coffee House," a place frequently visited by the renowned writer Lu Xun.
This coffee house later became a gathering spot for progressive young intellectuals in Shanghai.
In 1935, China's first coffee brand — Desheng Coffee House — was born in Shanghai.
In 1959, it was reorganized into the Shanghai Coffee Factory, becoming China's first enterprise specializing in coffee production and export.
Its tin-canned "Shanghai Brand" coffee became the only packaged coffee in China from the 1960s through the 1980s.
However, after the founding of the People's Republic, shifting social attitudes caused coffee house business to plummet, and coffee culture entered a roughly 30-year dormant period, not reviving until the Reform and Opening-Up era.
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