Where does China now stand in the history of coffee shop industry competition?
Liang Fan became the first Chinese competitor to win the World Latte Art Championship, held in Taiwan, China in November 2023. Lu Daoqiang took second and Lin Shaoxing third, marking the first time Chinese competitors swept the WLAC podium. Liang also won the World Latte Art Battle in Seoul ten days earlier.
His winning sets featured a rooster, a dinosaur, and a kangaroo, built on mathematical Boolean operations and photographic composition. The WLAC is the highest-level arena in latte art, with baristas working in espresso and steamed milk. The result marks a new chapter in the history of coffee shop industry competition, arriving after coffee's long introduction to China.
The 2023 World Latte Art Championship (WLAC) has concluded successfully in Taiwan, China, with Chinese competitor Liang Fan taking the championship in one fell swoop, becoming the first Chinese world champion in the history of the event. Lu Daoqiang and Lin Shaoxing took second and third places respectively, as Chinese competitors swept the top three for the first time in history. Liang Fan integrated mathematical Boolean operations and photographic composition into his latte art creations, conquering the judges with three pieces featuring a rooster, a dinosaur, and a kangaroo. This article takes you through a review of this peak showdown, to feel the rise of China's latte art power, and includes an appreciation of the champion's everyday works along with a Front Street brand recommendation.
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Just yesterday, Liang Fan made history—he became the first Chinese competitor to win the WLAC world championship!
On November 20, the World Latte Art Championship (WLAC), the World Coffee Roasting Championship (WCRC), and the World Coffee in Good Spirits Championship (WCIGS) concluded successfully in Taiwan, China.
After four days of intense competition, the final results of the WLAC were officially announced yesterday evening, with Chinese competitors sweeping the top three places. Liang Fan from Chongqing overcame all obstacles and ultimately claimed the championship trophy of the World Latte Art Championship! Mainland Chinese competitor Lu Daoqiang took second place! Taiwan, China competitor Lin Shaoxing won third place!
And just ten days earlier, the World Latte Art Battle (WLAB) held in Seoul, South Korea, had also just concluded, and the championship of that event was likewise claimed by Chinese competitor Liang Fan.
As the world's second-largest coffee competition, the WLAC is also the highest-level professional arena in the field of latte art, enjoying an extremely high reputation in the coffee industry. In the competition, baristas use espresso and steamed milk as materials to create latte art patterns. Each competitor is like a painter—the milk pitcher in hand is the brush, and the round surface of the coffee cup is the canvas.
Chinese competitor Liang Fan
Competitors must first submit images of their pre-made competition works to the judges, which the judges use as a scoring reference, and then score according to five criteria: color contrast, degree of difficulty of the pattern, degree of completion of the pattern, symmetry of the pattern, and creativity of the pattern, with a maximum of 5 points for each item, for a total of 25 points.
In this competition, Liang Fan not only demonstrated outstanding latte art skills, but also showed distinctive thinking in pattern creation. He developed his ideas around one core question: how to make the composition on the surface of the coffee look more beautiful and more comfortable from a systematic level.
Liang Fan's latte art patterns for this world championship
On the finals stage, the patterns Liang Fan chose were "rooster," "dinosaur," and "kangaroo." When creating these three works, he introduced the Boolean operation from mathematics, presenting endlessly varied yet still neat and beautiful figures through three ways of combining circles (intersection, union, and exclusion).
In fact, as early as the 2018 World Latte Art Championship, Liang Fan had already integrated the concept of composition from photography into latte art, striving to achieve the ultimate beauty in the patterns in the cup. For Liang Fan, excellent pattern creation is the combination of sensibility and rationality, the harmonious coexistence of softness and regularity. Below let us briefly appreciate this world champion's everyday works—truly a delight to the eyes～
It is worth celebrating that another Chinese representative competitor on this year's finals stage, Lu Daoqiang, also achieved the excellent result of 2023 WLAC world runner-up with his exquisite pattern designs. Different from Liang Fan's latte art style, Lu Daoqiang's finals works had an obvious cartoon style, with three dogs outlined by lines appearing very vivid.
Lu Daoqiang's latte art works for this world championship
At the moment the competition results were announced, the names of two outstanding competitors representing China, Liang Fan and Lu Daoqiang, were called out one after another, and the atmosphere on site was extremely exciting. Their superb skills not only let the world see the rise and progress of China's coffee industry, but also ignited the enthusiasm of domestic coffee practitioners, and further proved the strength and potential of China's latte art.
Finally, once again congratulations to the two competitors on lifting the trophies!!!
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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
