How Good Are Hainan Xinglong Coffee Beans? Is Xinglong Coffee Famous and What Are Its Flavor Characteristics?

Xinglong Coffee Introduction

To most city dwellers, coffee means fashion, sophistication, and leisure — a marker of refined taste. In Xinglong Coffee Town, though, coffee carries a different kind of charm: a warm, earthy aroma and an appeal that belongs to ordinary people.

Times change, and the forms Xinglong coffee takes may evolve with them, but the deep love the people of Xinglong feel for coffee keeps perfuming their lives, year after year.

Morning in Xinglong town simply must wake up in air thick with the smell of coffee.

Picture it: a small town where more than 100 coffee shops, big and small, send the fragrance of freshly brewed coffee drifting from their cups. The wind carries it through every street and alley, so even people nowhere near a café still share in that faint perfume.

In the 1950s, large numbers of returned overseas Chinese arrived in Xinglong, bringing their own culture and cuisine to a town that had barely been developed. Of everything they brought, coffee became the most influential — and it gradually wove itself into local life.

So it is that today, decades later, coffee is an inseparable part of daily life for the people here.

The Glorious Years of Xinglong Coffee

The founding of Xinglong coffee was tied not only to the returned-overseas-Chinese culture but directly to the economy of the era. In 1952, hoping to boost income, the newly established Xinglong Farm decided to introduce coffee cultivation to offset the drawback of long-cycle crops like rubber, whose harvests take years to arrive.

A popular saying supposedly circulated in Southeast Asia: "Teochew noodles and Fujian noodles, Hainan coffee famous to everyone." And when people spoke of Hainan coffee, Xinglong was the first name to win fame at home and abroad. Once large-scale cultivation took off, the returned overseas Chinese didn't just bring the habit of drinking coffee and the craft of brewing it to Xinglong — they went on to produce the celebrated Xinglong coffee right there.

For everyone in Xinglong, Xinglong coffee is a permanent source of pride, and almost anyone can tell you about those glorious years — above all the story of Premier Zhou Enlai and Xinglong coffee.

On February 7, 1960, Premier Zhou Enlai visited Xinglong Farm and, after tasting the coffee, praised it warmly: "Xinglong coffee is world-class. I have tried many foreign coffees, but the coffee we grow ourselves tastes the best." The premier drank three cups in a row and was reaching for a fourth when his wife, Deng Yingchao, gently talked him out of it. A cup of richly fragrant coffee and a beloved premier wrote a beautiful chapter into Xinglong's story. In that era, Xinglong coffee was already the most respectable gift a Hainan person could bring when visiting friends and relatives off the island.

Xinglong also gave birth to New China's first coffee factory. Its brand was named for the local mother river — the "Sun River." This time-honored Xinglong coffee name carries many fond memories for locals, and even now, 90% of the coffee shops in Xinglong town serve coffee supplied by that factory.

Made from carefully selected beans grown along the Sun River and crafted with refined Southeast Asian formulas and roasting techniques, the coffee of the Xinglong Overseas Chinese Farm Coffee Factory has earned international acclaim for being "excellent in color and taste, rich but not bitter, fragrant but not intense."

Conclusion

In short: Xinglong coffee may not carry the pedigree of an Ethiopian heirloom or a Panamanian Gesha, but its story — of returned overseas Chinese, a farm's gamble in 1952, and a town of 100-odd cafés — is one of the warmest in the coffee world.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

China actually has two coffee-growing provinces, Hainan and Yunnan — but Hainan's hot, low-lying coastal climate rules out arabica, which is why China's specialty coffee is concentrated in Yunnan. If this taste of Chinese coffee has you curious, FrontStreet Coffee's Yunnan arabica from Baoshan is washed processed and shows the traditional nut and chocolate flavors with a soft, balanced cup. The FrontStreet 2013 Yunnan Typica goes one better: an ancient arabica variety grown at 1,300 meters, medium roasted to reveal hazelnut, dried apricot, black tea, caramel, and ripe plum — remarkably clean and excellent value.

For a first foray into specialty coffee more broadly, FrontStreet recommends starting with classic, forgiving origins: Ethiopia's washed Gotinga Cooperative (jasmine florals, lemon acidity, berry notes) or natural Huakui (berry, floral, jackfruit, melon, and honey); Brazil's Cerrado Red Bourbon for creamy peanut, cocoa, and sweetness that can't go wrong; or the entry-level Panama Boquet washed Gesha for a first affordable taste of that famous orange-blossom honeyed character.