Qingke Luxury Camping Ground Introduces Changsha’s First Cocoa-to-Chocolate Workshop
A two-hectare meadow in Hunan’s Xiangjiang New Area now houses a working bean-to-bar chocolate facility alongside its traditional tent sites, marking a structural shift in how local outdoor operators capture weekend visitors. Located in Wufeng Village, Lianhua Town, the Qingke Luxury Camping Ground added the hands-on chocolate atelier to complement six years of outdoor hospitality infrastructure, according to reporting by local media.
The facility stands out as the first workshop in Changsha to handle the complete production sequence from raw cocoa beans to finished confectionery on site. While standard agritourism setups rely on pre-melted industrial chocolate blocks for visitor crafts, this operation requires participants to pound raw cocoa fragments by hand to extract natural fats before adding pure cocoa butter, milk powder, and sugar.
Inside the Bean-to-Bar Crafting Process at Lianhua Town
Visitors to the workshop pay a 198-yuan package fee that covers a two-to-three-person group session, tent setup gear, and access to public camp amenities. Operating rules require participants to measure 60 grams of roasted cocoa fragments into a custom stone mortar and work the mixture with a heavy pestle along the interior walls for roughly fifteen minutes until the botanical oils release.
Once the powder achieves a smooth, viscous texture, makers blend in the remaining ingredients before transferring the liquid into molds for a thirty-minute blast chill. Camp manager Zhao Xingsheng noted that the entire process takes under two hours per group. To deepen public education around the craft, the site imported four live cocoa tree saplings from Hainan via air freight and partnered with the Wanning Zhongbi Cocoa Amusement Park research base to provide technical cultivation support.
Shifting Demographics and Village Partnership Models
The addition of the confectionery workshop has altered the camp’s traditional visitor base. Corporate team-building events previously accounted for 80% of total bookings at the Lianhua Town location. Following the launch of the daily chocolate sessions—which drew up to 80 visitors a day during the National Day holiday period—family groups now make up 60% of the customer roster, alongside newly acquired school excursion requests.
Behind the commercial expansion lies a revenue-sharing framework between the private operators and the local agricultural community. Wufeng Village cooperative assets are tied directly to the camp’s financial performance, with the village collective drawing a 35% share of the camping ground’s revenue and a 20% cut from an upcoming treehouse coffee project. Local residents staff the site during peak weekend hours, while nearby agricultural ventures like Shengfeng Fruit Industry report rising visitor traffic and off-farm retail sales.
