Back to the roots: Author Shen Lan performs a nature ritual at her new home in the countryside.
“This is heaven on earth,” says Zhang Jinglei about her new home. The filmmaker spent ten years in China’s capital Beijing. Ten months ago, she packed her bags and moved to Caicun, a suburb of the city of Dali in the province of Yunnan, about 2,000 kilometers away. In just a few days, the 32-year-old found a two-room apartment for 1,000 yuan in the Bai-minority village. In Beijing, she paid well over three times that amount – for a room in a shared apartment.
The wish to leave Beijing had matured in her for quite some time. Escaping the social pressure in the city was only possible with amusements and alcohol. “I had to take the plunge,” she says. Her life is easier now, says Zhang, who was born in Tianjin, a city of 14 million people. She adopted a dog and even a pig, which she now walks on a leash.
Although the Chinese government promoted urbanization for decades, a reverse migration trend also began to develop. Real estate prices in urban areas have become very expensive, especially for young people entering the job market, and fierce competition for school spots in popular neighborhoods has become nerve-wracking. Added to this is a new awareness of physical and mental health among the middle class. During the Covid pandemic, many Chinese also discovered the diversity of their homeland. According to the Chinese travel portal Trip.com, never before have so many road trips been booked in China as in the past two years. Outdoor sports and camping have also never been more popular in the People’s Republic.
Other city dwellers who turned their backs on the urban insanity during the pandemic live in her house in Caicun, Zhang tells us, including, for example, a former Huawei employee. Many young people who moved to the countryside would at first “lie flat” (躺平 – “tangping”) a buzzword used to describe the social protest of young Chinese who, instead of pursuing of career, family and possessions, only do the bare minimum to make ends meet (China.Table reported). But after a period of acclimatization, many of them want to do something. “Baking bread, opening a bar, or selling art on the street.”
The government welcomes the new urban exodus. President Xi Jinping first spoke of his “rural revitalization” strategy in 2017. This involves the continued replacement of small farmers with large agribusinesses, but there are also newer initiatives to promote medium-sized, organic farms. Another goal is to expand infrastructure with schools, clinics, housing, roads and rail networks. The aim is to make life in the countryside so attractive that urbanites will also move their lives there.
“There are many attempts to revitalize rural areas with young talent,” says Elena Meyer-Clement, professor of Chinese studies at the University of Copenhagen. One of her main research areas is urbanization, and administrative and land reforms in China’s rural and semi-urban regions. Individual local governments specifically promote entrepreneurship and tourism, she says. “It’s a trend that can be seen in almost all other post-industrial states, whether it’s Japan or Brandenburg in Germany.”
What is special, however, is that this process takes place in China at the same time as rapid urbanization – “almost like a kind of exchange of the population controlled from above,” she says. To put it bluntly, small farmers are to migrate to the cities to boost domestic consumption, while young, educated townsfolk are to bring fresh, creative ideas to the countryside to help make the local economy more socially and ecologically sustainable.
‘Beautiful villages’ as an economic engine
That includes so-called “beautiful villages,” Meyer-Clement says. “This involves renovating existing villages or creating completely new ones that look like spruced-up traditional villages.” One example is the village of Longtan with its little creek and mill wheel, which nestles picturesquely in the mountainous landscape of the province of Guangxi. According to the local government, it is supposed to be 400 years old, and it encourages the influx with a budget for art projects and renovation work.
The feng shui seems to be right: Every year, 200,000 tourists visit Longtan to admire the Qing architecture or to watch plein air painters at work. Even the older villagers here have been trained as artists who now sell their work to tourists. “Many of these creative rural residents have Douyin channels, the Chinese TikTok, where they demonstrate how simple but modern rural life can be,” Meyer-Clement says. “Young, dynamic, creative mixed with time-honored values that have been lost in the city.”
However, the trend was only sporadic and limited to more developed areas, especially on China’s east coast. “Absolute poverty has just been overcome. Artist villages are not yet a big deal there,” Meyer-Clement says. “Things like e-commerce already work very well in the countryside. However, I would doubt whether these beautiful villages are a sustainable strategy.”
The new country dwellers, however, certainly see it differently. Shen Lan is one of them. Shortly before Shanghai went into its first major lockdown, the author and cultural scientist moved with her husband to an artists’ village outside Liangzhu in the province of Zhejiang. The landscape, shaped by mountains and rivers, is closely interwoven with Chinese cultural history. People already settled here several thousand years ago.
In the picturesque scenery, Shen is working on a book about Chinese natural philosophy, hermitage, and art. In the morning, she often likes to walk up a hill, ten minutes from her house, to watch the sunrise. Other dropouts like her, a writer, a professional dancer and a professor of anthropology, live in her village. The atmosphere is very warm, she says.
For seven years, Shen had lived in Shanghai, in a spacious apartment near the Jing’an Temple, with a small garden in the backyard. Still, she never found what she was looking for in the city: balance and spirituality. Just like the philosopher Zhuangzi, Shen believes life in the countryside is closely interwoven with the philosophy of tiān rén hé yi (天人合一): The human being is a part of nature. Heaven and man were originally one. The goal is harmony of all elements. “We Chinese have a very deep connection to nature, it’s in our blood,” Shen says. Even the ancient Confucians dreamed of retiring to the countryside once they had fulfilled their duty in the world.
Her long-term goal is to live in an even more eco-friendly and sustainable way, and perhaps one day start an eco-settlement herself. “It’s like going back to our roots. With a higher awareness of nature, of life and of who we really are.” Collaboration: Renxiu Zhao
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