China, known as the birthplace of tea, is waking up and smelling the COFFEE, with both foreign and local brands trying to expand the market here. Our reporter Shen Li went to a trade fair in China's capital for the latest trends and found that there's a whole other side to the industry.

Coffee is increasingly becoming the caffeine fix of choice for China's burgeoning middle class. Here at Hotelex Beijing which is hosting an international trade fair for the hospitality industry, booths exhibiting all kinds of coffee and brewing equipment are turning heads. One barista here says like tea, specialty coffee is worth the money and effort.

KENSHIN NINOMIYA BARISTA "You have some very valuable and expensive teas like Pu Er tea, so I think you can adapt that into a speciality coffee where the coffee beans are really selected and really taken care of and when you roast the beans, you have different kind of roast where you can profile your coffee and the last but not the least, when you brew all the materials that you're using, there's so many details that you can put focus into."

Now, not every coffee company is looking to produce that unmistakable brew, some have more sustainable ideas for the waste. Like this start-up, for example, which recycles used coffee grounds to make cosmetic products like body scrubs, lip balm and hand-made coffee soap. Generally, the recycle rate of coffee beans is lower than 10%, but Bean Book's founder hopes to get that close to 100 percent.

WANG YI FOUNDER, BEAN BOOK "Coffee beans actually contains a potent ingredient that repairs, nourishes, and renews your skin. So we recycled the coffee beans to make coffee lip balm, lipsticks and body scrubs. We'll continue to develop more products centered around coffee beans. And people really liked the idea, it's very nourishing and it smells nice."

With both foreign and local brands exploring China's evolving beverage market, it's anyone's guess what the future holds. But one thing's for sure, it seems the country's coffee drinkers will have a big say in the shake-up.