Making Coffee in a Pot: What Trending Cafes by the Rice Fields Really Offer

A tourist traveled to Dali, Yunnan, to see a popular café by the rice fields and found a thatched roof and mottled white walls instead of the viral images, comparing it to a village outhouse. The graffiti on the wall was the only detail matching the online photos, and the gap between the filtered shots and the real building left many netizens surprised.

Season and weather also change the scenery. During rice harvest, the green paddies in the photos become withered yellow fields. Since natural scenery is the selling point, the view can shift at any time. Coffee lovers planning a trip should check recent visitor photos and harvest timing, and can still enjoy a simple cup, whether making coffee in a pot or using a coffee pot at home.

Artistic cafés on social media are always enchanting, but are they really that beautiful in reality? Recently, a tourist traveled all the way to Dali, Yunnan, to visit a popular café by the rice fields, only to be stunned by what they saw—a thatched roof and mottled white walls, jokingly compared to a village outhouse. From lush green rice paddies to barren yellow fields after harvest, from carefully composed shots to filter-enhanced images, when natural scenery becomes a café's selling point, variables like season and weather can shatter the artistic fantasy at any moment. This article takes you behind the scenes of viral cafés and reminds coffee lovers to do their homework before making a trip—don't be led astray by "deceptive photos."

▲

Click to follow | Daily specialty coffee culture magazine Coffee Works

If one word could sum up a café, many would probably blurt out "artistic." Precisely because of this, cafés with an artistic vibe always attract a large number of tourists and become popular check-in spots in various exploration guides.

Recently, a tourist traveled a long distance specifically to Dali, Yunnan, just to see a certain artistic café in person. But upon arrival, gazing at the café beside the rice fields from afar, she was momentarily dazed: "I was stunned when I got there—it felt like the outhouse at our village entrance." A thatched roof and a white exterior wall that looked "filthy"—if not for the graffiti on the wall matching the graffiti in the online photos, many netizens admitted they would have mistaken it for a rural latrine.

Netizens who saw the photos also exclaimed: "Nothing wrong with the text, but the house is jaw-dropping," "It looks like a village shop from my childhood," "This is exactly the style of old, small, worn-out houses in our hometown—the kind that's about to collapse."

In addition, some tourists mentioned that when they went to check in following the photos, it happened to be rice harvest season. The imagined lush green rice fields were nowhere to be seen—only a lifeless expanse of withered yellow after harvest, a world apart from the photos circulating online.

In the imagination of artistic youth, an ideal rural café should have a clear blue sky overhead and emerald rice paddies just heading into ear all around. Push open the door, and the small space is filled with the aroma of coffee. Sitting inside, the wooden window frame perfectly frames the natural countryside scenery, with the sound of wind rustling through the rice fields in your ears and vibrant spring colors before your eyes—sipping coffee while slowly feeling time drift by.

To cater to this expectation, cafés that use scenery as a selling point spread exquisite photos through major social platforms, paired with titles like "Sisters, you must come here once in your life" or "In XX! A place worth visiting." Beautiful images and artistic, fresh captions are enough to make artistic youth's hearts flutter, sparing no effort to set aside time and journey to their "dream café."

But only upon arriving on-site do you realize that the beauty in the photos mostly requires the right timing, location, and people. Just like this café by the rice fields—without a cloudless sky, without lush green paddies, and lacking a photographer's superior skills and various editing software, its true appearance might instantly kill any desire to step inside and explore.

Nowadays, cafés that use natural scenery as a selling point are plentiful, and it's undeniable that some of them genuinely photograph well and are worth visiting. But natural scenery itself is unstable—the wrong season, bad weather, and other factors can all shatter the filter into pieces.

So, if you're planning a check-in trip, it's worth doing some extra research in advance to avoid being drawn in by various tech-enhanced "deceptive photos" on platforms and regretting it only upon arrival. Of course, this strong rustic atmosphere actually holds tremendous appeal for netizens who have never lived in the countryside.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

Disclaimer: Some images in this article are from the internet. For some content on the website such as images, we will respect the original copyright and indicate the source. However, due to the large quantity, some images and texts may not have been credited in time. Please forgive us. If the original author has any disputes, please contact the website and we will handle it. Once verified, we will correct it immediately. Compiled and edited by "Coffee Works." Please indicate the source when reposting. If there is any infringement, please inform us for deletion. Thank you~!

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.