To find the dance circle in the bed and breakfast’s courtyard, drive north from a bed sheet factory converted into a handicrafts market and towards a vegan eatery. It asks diners to “walk barefoot in the dirt and sunbathe.” If you see an unmanned craft beer bar where customers pay on the honor system, you’ve gone too far.
Welcome to the Chinese mountainous city of Dali, also known as Dalifornia. This is an oasis for China’s disaffected, castaways, or just the curious.
The city’s nickname is an homage to California and the easy-going, tree-filled, sunny stereotypes it evokes. It’s also one of the tech jobs that have been flocking there to write code in a beautiful setting nestled among the snow-capped 10,000-foot mountains of southwestern China since the rise of remote work during the pandemic. It is also a nod to the employees. Shining Erhai Lake.
The area has long been a hub for backpackers and artists, drawn by its low rents and idyllic old town, where ancient city gates and white-walled courtyard houses attract ethnic minorities who have lived there for thousands of years. It tells the history of the tribe. For years.
But these days, Dali is filled with another group of wanderers: young people from China’s big cities fleeing the intense lifestyle that so many once aspired to. Exhausted by the high cost of living, cutthroat competition, record youth unemployment and an increasingly stifling political environment, they turned Dali into the destination China is today.
“Young people who can’t integrate into the mainstream have no choice but to look for cities on the periphery,” said Zhou Xiaoming, 28, who immigrated from Shanghai three years ago.
Mr. Zhou has always been a free spirit and worked as a teacher at an alternative school in Shanghai. However, he found living there too expensive and wanted to explore more non-mainstream teaching methods. Dali had a lot to sample: an experimental kindergarten that taught hiking, a kindergarten that focused on crafts, and many homeschoolers. Mr. Chou is currently teaching one student privately in a village nestled between tea plantations on the outskirts of town.
“Dali is in the middle of nowhere, very tolerant and very fluid, with all kinds of people. And most of those people are eccentric,” Zhou said.
Depending on your point of view, Dali, with a population of 560,000 people, can feel like a paradise or a parody.
On a recent Wednesday, a Chinese fire dancer gyrated in the courtyard of an Israeli musician’s home to the drone of a didgeridoo, an indigenous Australian instrument. A few miles away, on the streets of Old Town, throngs of young men peddled cheap fortune-telling books as pulsating music emanated from nearby bars. In a 24-hour bookstore, a reading group spread out on cushions was discussing the famous 20th century author Shen Congwen.
Dali’s seemingly inevitable buzzword is “healing.” Soothing yoga, soothing camping trips, and even soothing coffee shops. On a recent Tuesday, about two dozen people in a coworking space listened to a presentation about fighting loneliness. In the guest house’s dance circle, participants were encouraged to rediscover their inner child.
Veggie Ark is a vast complex north of the old town that has a particularly relaxing atmosphere, with a vegan eatery, yoga studio, gong lessons, and dyeing workshops. It will eventually include a “self-sufficient lab” that Tang Guanhua, 34, was building in her courtyard. Once completed, the handcrafted wooden dome will be powered by solar energy and serve as an exhibition space. Handicrafts using local materials.
Mr Tan hoped the lab would encourage visitors to try a more sustainable lifestyle. More than a decade ago, when he pioneered a back-to-nature lifestyle in China, brewing homemade vinegar and producing his own electricity, many people thought he was strange. To date, eight people have paid to participate in the construction of the dome.
“Before, everything was fine and everyone went to work. Now, a lot of things aren’t right,” he said over a vegan hot pot dinner. “People are thinking about what to do with themselves.”
Some new arrivals say they want to stay forever. Some admit they just want to try a different lifestyle before returning to the city.
Still, even the most cynical observer will admit that the city feels distinctly more open and relaxed than most other places in China.
“People here don’t intentionally try to put labels on you. You just have to be yourself and be noticed,” said the woman, who moved from Jiangxi province to Dali a month ago after dropping out of college. said Joey Chen, a 22-year-old freelance writer who immigrated.
Chiang was relaxing in the bookstore’s attic reading corner, poring over Simone de Beauvoir’s novel “All Men Are Mortal.” On the downstairs wall were pictures of Kafka and Che Guevara.
Openness also applies to potentially sensitive topics. Another coffee shop had rainbow flags inserted into the rafters. Another bookstore sold books on religious topics, including American Indian shamanism, Christianity, and Tibetan history.
The question is how long Dali can maintain such a haven.
Tourists and influencers flock to Dali, brandishing selfie sticks and posing in pink cars loaned by businesses for photos. Throughout the old town, kitschy souvenir shops have replaced handicraft stalls and bookstores. His lakeside B&Bs are lined with sophisticated designs that would look right at home in Shanghai or Beijing, and are often run by wealthy people from those very places.
Rents have soared, and long-time residents are being forced to live in villages far from the old city.
And, as Lucia Chao, the owner of the bookstore where Chen was reading Beauvoir, recently learned, no part of China is immune to the increasingly tense political situation.
Qiao, 33, moved to Dali from Chengdu in 2022 after being laid off from a technology company. She said she opened a bookstore focused on art, feminism and philosophy because she wanted to create a space where people could relearn to think critically.
But in August, authorities suddenly confiscated all of Zhao’s books on the grounds that she had only applied for a regular business license, not a license specifically for selling publications. She took a few months off work while applying for her license and rebuilding her inventory.
She is now more careful in choosing books. Local officials occasionally visit her store, recently scrutinizing a display of anti-war books she has published.
“There’s definitely more freedom in Dali than in cities like Beijing or Chengdu,” Zhao says. “But compared to when I was here last year, the space has shrunk.”
Still, for many of Dali’s people, politics seems to be the last thing on their minds. And it may not be out of fear, but the fact that they came to Dali precisely to avoid such worldly headaches.
In the kitchen of a co-living space popular with programmers and entrepreneurs, 30-year-old programmer Li Bo recalled his own experience with Dali’s limits of tolerance. Tired of his office job in Beijing, he moved to Dali in October and quickly befriended the other residents of the youth space. During the day, they worked together on the rooftop patio. At night, they bar-hopped with their laptops in tow.
Shortly after his arrival, on Halloween, he dressed up as a coronavirus inspector, a figure dressed in hazmat clothing that has come to symbolize China’s three years of tough restrictions. Although he claimed it was a lark and not political, he was briefly detained by police.
But among the bonfire parties, hikes and open mics the town offers, Lee had better things to do than dwell on the negative. His latest project, the development of an AI fortune-telling bot, he plans to offer to his fellow touts the next night for 70 cents per fortune-telling.
Li Yu Contributed to research.