Since graduating in music from Fujian Normal University, Qi Xiaolan, 45, has worked at a State-owned company in Quanzhou, Fujian province, doing a job that has nothing to do with art for 24 years.

But she has found an unexpected way to nurture her artistic side - coffee tasting.

Qi always knew about tea. She grew up in a city famous for a tea called tieguanyin, where virtually every household was deeply familiar with the arcane details of proper tea making, serving and drinking.

But Qi broke with the past. She fell in love with coffee around 2000, when cafes started to show up in the city, and she would observe how coffee was brewed.

"I like the atmosphere in the cafes, which is delicate and comfortable. There is an artistic feeling, and the fragrance of coffee permeates the whole room," she said.

Drawn by the comfortable atmosphere in the beginning, she started to learn the art of coffee tasting in 2014. The next year, she began Q-grader training in Beijing, a program offered by the Coffee Quality Institute, an organization founded by the Specialty Coffee Association, a nonprofit based in California.

During the training, which lasted for nine days, Qi was exposed to intensive and even "painful" courses focused on the art of tasting fine coffee.

"I had to sip from 120 cups of coffee a day on average," she said. "For example, there was a difficult part of the training where people learn to grade the sweetness, saltiness and sourness of water that tasted really plain."

After passing the required tests, she became a coffee grader accredited by the institute.

Unlike casual drinking, coffee tasting requires the taster to exactly identify the characteristics of coffee beans, such as their fragrance, the fragrance of extracted coffee and its aftertaste, Qi said.

Usually it requires sips from at least three cups to assess the quality of the beans, she said.

Also, coffee tasting is not only a matter of personal interest but an important way to help set the price of coffee beans, which can in turn affect the income of coffee farmers, Qi said.

Now, after getting to know a number of people who love coffee and who have tasting skills, Qi has gained access to quality green coffee beans of her own. She has renovated one of her apartments into a coffee classroom to communicate with others having the same interest.

The 150-square-meter house is equipped with all the equipments required to make and taste coffee, as well as a table that accommodates 12 people.

The classroom, she said, is open to family members and a small number of other local people from all walks of life.

The number of coffee tasters in China is "far fewer" than in countries where coffee is more popular, according to Qi. But that doesn't seem to bother her. A lot of young people in China are showing enthusiasm for coffee tasting, and the number of tasters is "increasing every year", she said.

"Everyone has their own goals and life interest", she added.

Studying coffee can be costly. Qi has spent about 300,000 yuan ($43,600) on her hobby.

"The biggest benefit of studying coffee is that it has opened a window for me to look through into the world," Qi said.

"I love beautiful things. After I started studying coffee, I met a lot of people who also love it. And that started a totally different life for me."

Contact the writers at [email protected]. Yang Jie in Fuzhou contributed to this story.