Love brews a passion for excellent taste

Every morning, the aroma of brewing coffee drifts across Xinglong, a small town in southeastern Hainan that boasts more than 180 coffee bars. This means the town, with its 30,000 population, has the highest density, per head, of coffee bars in China.

"Long before Starbucks swept the world, people in Hainan, China's only tropical province, were starting the day with a cup of coffee, popularly nicknamed "old daddy's tea," said Chen Peng. Chen knows the subject, is a specialist in tropical plants and has worked for more than 20 years at the Spices and Beverages Research Institute under the China Tropical Agricultural Plants Research Institute based in Xinglong, the home of the country's first State-run coffee farm.

Xinglong coffee, once graded as "world-class" by coffee lover and former premier Zhou Enlai, has been designated as the official coffee beverage for the Boao Forum for Asia, an annual event held in Boao, eastern Hainan, every March since 2002.