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Where Coffee Revives an Old City: Overseas Chinese Media Explore Shenyang's Bajing Coffee Alley
Reporter 王子龙
On September 20, the 2026 'Chasing the Chinese Dream, Discovering Liaoning' overseas Chinese-language media delegation visited the South Market subdistrict of Shenyang's Heping District to explore Bajing Coffee Alley, a roughly 3.44-square-kilometer district. Far from a single ordinary lane, it is a mixed-use cultural and tourism quarter built on a century-old commercial heritage and strung together by coffee culture, weaving historic architecture together with youth-driven businesses so deftly that it has won the 'China Coffee Industry Distinctive District Innovation Award' and earned a reputation among locals as Shenyang's 'city living room.'
The district preserves 26 immovable cultural relics and historic buildings, with Republican-era structures such as the Tang Yulin Mansion, Wang Tiehan's former office and the old Citibank building scattered among the lanes — most now converted into cafés, galleries and creative studios, creating a stroll that pairs coffee in one hand with history in the other. Nearly 200 coffee and beverage businesses now cluster here, chain brands alongside independent cafés of every style, branching into a diverse 'coffee-plus' mix of reading spaces, craft studios, exhibitions and craft beer, each aiming for its own character rather than a copy-paste look; street-corner art installations — a coffee-cup wall, a geographic-coordinates wall, a poetry wall and themed sculptures — have also made the alley a favorite check-in spot for residents and visitors alike.
The delegation learned that Bajing Coffee Alley keeps commercial vibrancy and everyday neighborhood life coexisting side by side, drawing roughly 2 million visitors a year — a third of them from outside the city — with annual sales topping 200 million yuan, and has become a gathering place for Shenyang's young entrepreneurs. Landmark touches around the district, from the 'Eight Doves' sculpture that plays on the alley's name and the image of peace doves, to a light installation made of 140 gradient-colored ceramic mugs, a 72-panel ceramic poetry wall inscribed with ten classic poems, and a cluster of heart-shaped sculptures spelling out 'I love you' in a hundred languages, together trace the fine-grained, 'embroidery-style' urban renewal that has let the old alley balance historical preservation, industry cultivation and everyday livelihood all at once.
