Grounds for success

The morning sun gilds the rice paddies of Henggang village as a white pony with the name tag "Mario "eagerly nudges a customer's cappuccino with its nose.

This is no pastoral daydream but rather, it's the carefully curated reality of Horse Coffee, a countryside startup in the village in Jiashan county, Jiaxing city, Zhejiang province, where the aroma of steaming espressos is blended with equine therapy.

Since it opened two years ago, the cafe has pulled in visitors from neighboring cities, including Shanghai, which is about an hour's drive away.

"We've never paid for advertisements, customers send their friends and colleagues our way through word-of-mouth," says Li Xuewen, founder of the cafe.

Weekends bring license plates and at peak times, her business serves more than 600 drinks to leisure-seekers in Henggang, the woman in her 30s says.

Born and raised in Jiashan, Li studied preschool education at college but began her career in the concrete jungle, where she spent seven years making viral content for brands.

"I was tired of burning myself out, working like cattle in a cubicle," she laughs.

Her escape route emerged unexpectedly during a 2022 visit to Henggang. The village immediately tugged at her heartstrings.

"The serene courtyards, well-developed infrastructure, and surrounding rice fields were exactly the pastoral landscape I had always imagined," she says.

Without blinking, she rented a single-story farmhouse.

"It felt closer to the essence of rural life I was originally looking for," she says.

With the house secured, Li decided to give it a new identity as a village cafe, in keeping with her own love of coffee.

"But a cafe that only sells coffee won't survive these days, so we have to offer something of emotional value," she says.

With seven years of experience in the media, Li has a keen sense for building viral brands and turning online traffic into lasting, real life engagement.

She made a point of studying other nearby cafes and deliberately filtered out cookie-cutter concepts. Then, she spotted her niche.

"Coincidentally, I also keep a horse — and that's when the idea hit me: Why not combine the two?"

The cafe's concept is simple. Li pairs coffee with hands-on interaction with horses.

Patrons can book 58-yuan ($8) pony play sessions to groom Mario or to ride Oreo, a chocolate-colored dwarf horse, along the dykes that thread through fields of golden grain.

"It proves right that city dwellers don't just want coffee, they crave experiences they can't get downtown," Li says.

She shares stories about the cafe online and has more than 70,000 followers on her Douyin account. Her goal for the year is for sales to break 2 million yuan.

Li is one of the enterprising spirits that have been drawn to Henggang since it was transformed from a typical underdeveloped village into an environmental getaway more than a decade ago.

Once a major hub for pig farming, Henggang faced significant challenges from pollution resulting from animal husbandry.

In 2013, local authorities launched reforms that gradually shut down livestock sheds and poultry enclosures, and restored the land to its original agricultural use.

The transformation not only reclaimed the landscape, but also injected fresh green momentum into its development.

"The smelly air has given way to the scent of flowers, and mud lanes to well-paved roads," says Ma Dongmei at her restaurant, which she launched, in Henggang.

A village native, Ma previously worked at a highway toll station for 10 years before losing her job in 2020 when the station was closed.

Facing unemployment during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, she spent several months at home before noticing the growing popularity of her village as a tourist destination.

Recognizing the lack of dining options, the woman in her 40s decided to open her own agri-tourism business later that year, starting with a small barbecue area on her family's former vegetable and fruit plot.

She had no prior experience of hospitality but drew inspiration from visits to other homestays during her travels.

She began modestly with a few tents for barbecues, catering mostly to visitors from nearby areas. As demand grew, she expanded the space, eventually being able to accommodate large groups, including school study-tour groups of up to 800 people.

Her menu has evolved to include rice dishes with seasonal ingredients like salted meat, broad beans, and water chestnuts that are cooked outdoors, which have become a hit with families seeking parent-child activities.

She owes the success of her entrepreneurial initiative to the transformation of her village, which has had its infrastructure upgraded and its homes painted a uniform white.

As the village's first restaurant, Ma's venture filled a gap in the market.

Despite challenges like a typhoon in 2023 that destroyed the tents, she rebuilt and continued to thrive, leveraging word-of-mouth, as well as online platforms like Meituan, for bookings.

Today, she not only supports her family but creates seasonal jobs for local women during peak periods.

While she doesn't offer lodging, she works with nearby homestays to refer guests. Her income now greatly surpasses her toll station wages, though she remains modest about future plans, and simply hopes for continued growth.

Yen Enchuan, a 70-year-old entrepreneur from Taiwan, settled in Henggang five years ago after spending three decades in the Chinese mainland — first in Shanghai and later in Zhejiang, where he initially worked in real estate development.

When the property market slowed, he turned to rural tourism, drawn by the village's potential and his own retirement aspirations.

Despite opening his homestay just as the pandemic hit in 2020, business remained stable.

In May 2023, he expanded with a restaurant serving Taiwan cuisine, catering primarily to corporate clients from nearby companies and Shanghai-based visitors.

Yen says that success in rural hospitality requires more than seeking profit. It demands a genuine connection to the environment.

The village's proximity to Shanghai and its post-transformation charm convinced him to invest.

He leased seven houses, converting two into homestays with 10 rooms, while the others are dining spaces or host collaborative projects.

His sprawling 3,000-square-meter garden with tropical trees and plans for a rustic bread oven for pizza-making have created a rural-urban contrast that attracts corporate team-building groups.

"Our homestay has this little river flowing right in the front … with rolling hills behind us, it creates exactly that pastoral setting I've always dreamed of having," Yen says.

Yen has brought his heritage to the village.

Now semiretired, he focuses on fine-tuning guest services and investing in small-scale improvements.

"I take pride in what Henggang has become," he says. "And I hope one day Henggang will be proud of what we've built here together."