Guiyang, the provincial capital of Guizhou, with a population of 6 million, over 3,000 cafés, and more than a dozen national and world champion baristas, saw its reputation as a "city of champion coffee" reach a peak in 2025, when Peng Jinyang won the World Coffee Brewing Championship.

Before that milestone, however, another moment should not be overlooked. In 2024, Peng Jinyang opened his brand "Captain George" on Taiyuan Road in Shanghai, quickly rivaling leading local cafés such as O.P.S. both in terms of popularity and reputation. Its influence extended beyond the physical store, as the coffee beans he sourced became widely recognized on review platforms, effectively endorsing multiple cafés across the city.

Yet anyone who has visited Guiyang would know that the city's rise as a coffee hub cannot be attributed to a single individual. In August last year, Shanghai-based O.P.S. was, in turn, drawn to Guiyang. At Duide Coffee, visitors arriving with suitcases are a common sight, with even a dedicated luggage storage area set up inside the shop.

Many observers attribute Guiyang's emergence as a "city of champion coffee" to the combined efforts of competition-driven baristas, experience-oriented young consumers, and supportive urban planning. While this helps explain how the city scaled from one to many, it does not fully answer how it made the leap from zero to one.

As scholar Yan Xia notes in Youth Coffee Consumption Culture, the spread of cafes is not merely about the formation of coffee-drinking habits, but also reflects the rise of experiential consumption among younger generations – where emotional and spatial experiences matter more than the beverage itself. In other words, the process of drinking coffee has become more important than the coffee alone.

In Guiyang, this distinctive experience can be understood through three dimensions.

First is density. With more than 3,000 cafes concentrated in the relatively compact old districts of Yunyan and Nanming, many of the city's most popular spots lie within a one-kilometer radius. This level of concentration surpasses even Shanghai’s well-known "JuFuChang" area – Julu , Fumin and Changle roads.

Such proximity allows visitors to explore the cafe scene on foot, weaving together local specialties like potato cakes, Changwang noodles, beef rice noodles and glutinous rice into a seamless "walk, eat, and drink" experience.

Second is depth. Coffee in Guiyang has become deeply integrated into the city's local culture – far more than one might expect. This integration is evident in flavor, with distinctly local ingredients such as fish mint, rosehip, crispy pork bits, and fried duck incorporated into creative coffee beverages, giving them a uniquely "Guiyang" character.

More strikingly, this fusion extends into space and everyday life. Many cafes in Guiyang function as true "community shops," often tucked inside residential compounds. Visitors may need to pass through gated neighborhoods, walk around gardens, fitness equipment, and chatting residents before finding them – examples include GTS on Diantai Lane and Farfalla on Shifu Road. This blending of cafes with lived-in community spaces further reinforces their local identity.

For visitors, the experience of moving through everyday local life before arriving at a well-crafted cup of coffee is difficult to replicate elsewhere. For residents, it has made coffee a natural part of daily life, quickly turning it into something familiar and seamlessly integrated.

Third is reach. Cafe owners in Guiyang tend to use online platforms not primarily for promotion, but as a way of sharing knowledge and culture. Their content often adopts an accessible, demystified tone, engaging audiences on equal footing in a style that resonates strongly with younger consumers. The result is a broader and more influential presence for Guiyang's coffee culture.

As Guizhou filmmaker Bi Gan once remarked when describing his creative inspiration, "This sense of space is not something I created – it simply exists in the place where I live." The same could be said of Guiyang's coffee culture: it does not need to be constructed – it simply needs to be.