Shi Danni, born in 1994, is a native of Huanghu, a town in Yuhang, a district in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province. She won the championship, in the "Village Coffee Master" category, during the 2025 Zhejiang Agricultural Industry Vocational Skills Competition. Shi runs her family's farm in Huanghu.
Transition
In 2016, Shi's parents started the family's farm in Huanghu. At that time, Shi was still working at an architectural firm, living a routine urban life. But she felt sad each time she visited her parents, as she witnessed her parents struggling to sell their fruit. Shi wanted to help her parents.
In 2019, Shi quit her job and returned to Huanghu to run her parents' farm. The transition was sometimes difficult. During the first few months, Shi spent almost every day learning; for example, fruit-tree-cultivation techniques, agricultural-product marketing, and ways to integrate traditional agriculture and modern-management concepts. She has since balanced operating the farm while planning its future transformation. Shi has come to understand, clearly, that modern agriculture requires not only diligent hands, but also broad vision and innovative thinking.
In 2022, Shi was introduced to the specialty-coffee culture. That gave her an idea: Why not open a cafe on the farm? She enrolled in a professional barista-training course, used her savings to purchase equipment, and transformed unused space on the farm into a cafe. Shi's cafe officially opened in 2023. "The cafe is great at attracting customers to the farm. People living in the city long for the countryside. They want to get close to nature," Shi says.
Diverse Development
In 2025, Shi participated in the Zhejiang Agricultural Industry Vocational Skills Competition. As luck would have it, the competition was held during the season when her farm's cherries and mulberries were ripe. Shi cleverly blended the two fruits, and Yuhang's specialty tea, into her coffee, to create her signature coffee, "Cherry Blossom Snow Brew."
Recalls Shi: "I never expected to make it all the way. I was really surprised and overjoyed when I learned I had won the championship." Her success turned out to be more than an honor; it inspired Shi to develop new coffee products.
After she returned to the farm, Shi began experimenting with and developing a series of "seasonal-specialty" drinks. For example, in spring, she infused cold-brew coffee with the sweetness of peaches; in midsummer, she used bayberries to create a special, purple-red drink; in autumn, she added the aroma of osmanthus into latte; and, in winter, she introduced strawberry latte to her customers. Shi not only changed the farm's business model with the cafe; rather, she grew to realize a single business format was not sustainable for the farm's long-term development. Instead, she concluded, diverse business operations were the realistic choice for a modern family farm seeking to adapt to market changes.
Shi gradually developed a composite business model, which combined coffee, fruit picking, making crafts, catering and providing accommodations, for the family's farm. Shi also began offering various services that provided guests with hands-on experiences, such as making wood-fire pizza, producing stone-ground tofu (bean curd) and making botanical tie-dyeing by hand. "These new formats give visitors more reasons to come, and stay longer," Shi says.
Developing Community
Shi plans to continue expanding the farm's offerings, by exploring more possibilities to combine agriculture, culture and tourism, with the ultimate goal of providing more employment opportunities to villagers.
Shi's success in transforming her family's farm showcases the diverse possibilities for women as they participate in agricultural and rural development. Her success is influencing, and helping transform, those around her. For example, her younger sister, who studied art, created many exquisite, hand-painted illustrations of coffee-making to hang in the cafe. The paintings have become popular with tourists.
Shi's cafe, with the surrounding pottery studios and silk-umbrella workshops, has come to form a diverse youth community in her hometown.
Shi used the cafe to drive the transformation of her family's farm. Shi has proven women can contribute to rural revitalization, while also creating new development paths that integrate tradition and modernity, and city and countryside. Shi's story is about more than personal entrepreneurial success; it reflects the unique role, and value, of contemporary women in rural revitalization.
(Women of China English Monthly April 2026)
Editor: Wang Shasha
