We have an exciting issue coming out next week here at Beijing Review. Our focus: Coffee! Over the past five years, China's coffee industry has seen remarkable growth. Cafés have become a common site in cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Kunming and across the country, and the upward trend sees no end in sight.

Beijing Review sat down with journalist Elvis Anber to tell us more about this coffee-focused issue.

Beijing Review: So, next week, coffee.

Elvis Anber: Absolutely. We're going to devote a good portion of the magazine to a series of stories on the increasingly popular drink. It's a hot topic right now, and we come at it from all sides.

And you went to the heart of the coffee industry here in China, Pu'er.

Pu'er, as we all know, is famous for its tea. But there's a change underway in that city and the surrounding vicinity and in Yunnan Province in general. More land and money is being devoted to developing the coffee industry there and has been for some time. Local governments there are quite excited about the further potential of coffee crops.

I, along with the wonderfully talented Zhou Xiaoyan and our brilliant photographer Wei Yao, visited a number of places in Yunnan to learn more about the industry up close. Much of the growth in the coffee industry here begins in Pu'er. If you want to talk coffee in China, you have to begin in Pu'er.

What kinds of stories can we expect next week?

Without giving too much away, we wanted to come at this coffee phenomenon from a variety of fronts because there's just so much to tell. Of course, there's the business side of it all, particular Aini's partnership with Starbucks. Aini is China's biggest coffee producing company, but not too many people know about Aini--what it stands for, where it's headed. We also headed straight to some of China's coffee mountains where we spend time with coffee plantation workers and their families to find out how harvesting coffee has transformed their lives. Also, drinking coffee and spending time in a café is trendy right now among China's urban middle class. We take a look at that and what coffee could mean for China's cherished teahouses.

Coffee, it seems, is so wide reaching in China.

The way the industry is growing right now, coffee has economic and socio-cultural implications in China. It's really quite fascinating to watch it all unfold.