Customers drink coffee at an outdoor café in front of a historical building at Columbia Circleon Friday.

A coffee festival was launched in downtownChangningDistrict, inviting city residents and tourists to cafés in or near many of Shanghai’s renowned historical structures.

TheChangningCoffee Culture Festival began on Friday at Columbia Circle and will run to the end of May with activities along the over century-oldYuyuanRoad and its nearby historical streets.

Shanghai is one of the cities with the world’s largest number of cafés. A total of 6,913 were operating across the city as of January last year. There’s an average of 2.85 cafés for every 10,000 people in Shanghai, the same density as in New York, London and Tokyo.

The city government initiated a coffee week last month to promote coffee culture.

For the event inChangning, the district government has released a map with 46 boutique cafés and arranged guided tours around them.

Yang Jian / SHINE

A coffee bazaar at Columbia Circle.

The Akimbo Café Lab onYuyuanRoad is in the 91-year-old house where writer, translator and scholarShiZhecun(1905-2003) lived upstairs. It combines a gift shop with innovative and cultural products, an art gallery and the café.

The nearbyGamanCafé is inside the former residence of Chen Guangpu(1881-1976), founder of the city’s first private bank.

The Seesaw Coffee in Columbia Circle features regular community events such as lectures from vinyl record collectors, dramas and handicraft workshops.

“I was told by grandparents that Shanghai was filled with cafés with fashionable decorations and jazz music in the 1920s," saidXuYingting, boss of the Before Sunset Coffee onWuyiRoad. “I’d like to restore the vintage style of traditional local cafés.”

A number of cultural activities will be held during the two-month festival at popular landmarks such as Columbia Circle, once a popular country club for Americans between 1927 and 1942 and former site of the Shanghai Institute of Biological Products, once the city’s major vaccine production base.

Yang Jian / SHINE

Customers have a coffee break beside the swimming pool at Columbia Circle on Friday.

The city’s first coffee and drama festival will be held at the compound during the Labor Day holiday between May 1 and 5 when 25 coffee-related dramas will be staged.

The Story Shop onYuyuanRoad, inspired by the Japanese novel "Miracles of theNamiyaGeneral Store," will launch a coffee recycling project. Customers can exchange coffee cups from nearby cafés with coffee grounds, which can be used as fertilizer, air purifier and skincare products. The paper cups will become an art installation and exhibited in the shop.

Manycafésand bookstores inChangningwill also host reading clubs to promote coffee culture.

“Coffee shops are always related to innovation and entrepreneurship,” saidXuJinjiang, director of the literature institute of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

“The thriving coffee culture inChangningis expected to boost the district’s culture and innovation as well as entrepreneurship sectors,”Xusaid.

Yang Jian / SHINE

Customers can taste various kinds of coffee during the two-month festival.