A group of farmers works across a field digging up what I can only assume is some sort of valuable medicinal root. They're probably not cutting the grass with scissors, anyway.
Jun
27
2010
27
2010
Yunnan Canyon’s Black Gold (雲南峽谷的黑金)
By Evan
Mr. Xie, owner of Xinzhai Coffee, explaining the secret to his success, by Andy
“The first step to getting our coffee farmers to produce a quality product was to get them drinking coffee,” our host explained, a freshly pressed cup of his own brew in his hand. On the couch opposite him, one of his growers — and a friend from the same village — added that over the past years just about everybody in the village has picked up the habit of drinking 8-10 cups of the black stuff a day. Andy and I sat shaking like leaves in October from our eighth cup in a few hours, amazed that we had been out-caffeine’ed by a room full of Chinese.
We were sitting in the Xinzhai Manor Coffee Company (新寨咖啡公司), guests of the founder and owner Mr. Xie Xianwen (謝顯文). Mr. Xie opened his company in his native Lujiang (潞江) in Yunnan’s Baoshan Prefecture (雲南保山市) for two reasons. First, coffee had been grown in his home village of Xinzhai — after which the company is named — for years without anybody taking the time to organize the farmers or develop the industry. Second, he realized there was good money to be made in the domestic coffee business. So he quit his job in a tobacco company — and his smoking habit — scraped up a little capital, and got roasting. (more…)
Jun
26
2010
26
2010
Jun
24
2010
24
2010
Jun
21
2010
21
2010
Photo: Faux-Minorities?
Many of the women in this small-town market on our way out of Yunnan were dressed like the ethnic minorities we've seen elsewhere in the province, but we were told everyone was Han Chinese. Either someone gave us incorrect information (which happens all the time), or these people are impostors!