Those Cultured Youth in Dali

digital nomads, creative communities, and speak silicon valley

Welcome to the first episode of the irresistible Dali.

If you are China-related but don’t have a friend who have recently been to Dali, you should probably make more friends — because Dali is the talk of the town in China right now.

It is not a new sensation though. Dali has long been a classic adventure destination in inland China and an utopian city for exhausted city-dwellers. A typical Dali migrant is, let’s say, Alice Wang, who had always been a good student and upon graduation, worked at a big four agency in CBD Beijing for years, before getting tired of the concrete jungle 996 schedule and moving to Dali to open a bar.

Dali in 2022, has gained renewed attention as the digital nomad trend continues to rise in China and Chinese tech workers develop their own vision of a decentralized Internet amidst the rising web3 movement globally. “Dali carries the dreams of idealists in China generations after generations,” comments my friend Yaling.

What I found the most fascinating thing about Dali is the sense of community it embodies — you cannot necessarily find it in other Chinese cities. Its closely-knit yet inclusive creative and tech communities mean that even for a new arrival, they can easily find likely-minded people and feel welcomed, supported and empowered.

City of the Year 2022

They say Dali is “Dalifornia". The town attracted the first waves of international backpackers (pleasant weather, unmanufactured old towns, nature and ethnic culture) following the opening and reform in China, and was one of the popular destinations for China’s own hipsters — the so-called wenyi qingnian 文艺青年 — which could be literally translated as “cultured youth”. Just as “hipsters”, wenyi qingnian is a term of the past and a target of erudite critiques sometimes. To put that aside, nevertheless, it is collective memory of one generation (post-90s) and incorporates important cultural implications. A wenyi qingnian is Alice Wang’s arty friend, who would spend weekends going to art galleries and indie band performance.

Dali in 2022, is more busy than ever before. First are the usual mindless tourists fueled by summer breaks (and this year especially as Chinese borders continue to close and some other tourist cities were being placed under lockdown, see a Chinese social media article 每日人物：一半中国人去云南，挤爆了大理 Half of Chinese went to Yunnan, pouring into Dali). According to statistics, the number of visitors arriving in Dali this summer surpassed the same period in 2019 — quite a thing considering China’s zero-covid keeps creating a black hole in tourism.

Apart from that group of visitors, there are more Alice Wang’s other friends now on the streets of Dali — those who have decided to rent a 1000-some-yuan bedroom and order a seat in a co-working office for three months.

(Privileged) and proud digital nomads are arriving in the age of reduced mobility and lockdowns post-pandemic. Then is the web3 community. You might be confused by now and I have been there too except I am still confused. But borrowing the language of a Google search, in short, web3 is referred as the upcoming decentralized Internet revolution that comes with the adoption of new technologies such as blockchain (I took a whole class about blockchain in school but still have no ideas about what it implies).

So if you were with me in Dali in mid August, when the first-ever web3 conference was brought there by a grassroots youth organization, you would be very likely to be seated in a restaurant next to a full table of techies who cannot stop using silicon valley buzzwords and jargons. Wandering around in the day, you will also easily bump into Zoom meeting-friendly cafes.

Uniquely Dali

I visited Dali the third weekend of August and I stayed longer than I should. A supposedly weekend trip turned out to be five days, with three days being a temporary digital nomad. It was hard to leave.

Funny thing — I actually felt overwhelmed by Dali for a couple of hours upon arrival, mainly because I was coming from the other direction — I was coming back from an intense high altitude hiking trip and not very used to humans other than trees. After getting off a bus, I happened to run into the thousand-year-old traditional marketplace Sanyuejie Market 三月街集市, which for certain days in a month according to the lunar calendar, locals would sell homemade tea pots, fresh produce or just household necessities. It was the civilization that I didn’t necessarily miss after hanging out with yaks and feeling intimate with virgin forests.

However, when I first climbed into the rooftop of my guesthouse (you will not be forgiven if you stay a chained Hilton in Dali), I realized I was just between the Cangshan Mountain 苍山 and Erhai Lake 洱海. My facial features got softened instantly - “I can totally live here,” I said to the mountains.

Let’s face it — enough travel blogs have said about how picturesque and quintessential Dali is, even its raining days have charm. Here is my own impression: the best thing about settling down in Dali is most likely you will live by the old town, which lies between Cangshan and Erhai. Getting both Cangshan Mountain and Erhai Lake views waking up each day might be the peace and love we are talking about for reaching self-transcendence.

But to be honest, I have to admit that during my stay in Dali, I thought I were in Shanghai for some seconds— when turning corner to a scene of a crowd of young people sitting on loosely-arranged camping chairs at minimalism style coffee shops, when spotting an alpaca casually appearing in front of a shop, and seeing a street of night mobile vendors ranging from Taro reading, self-made alcohol stands and temporary KTV booths, and the trendy and laid-back youngsters behind them.

Some other times I think I might be in the bay area: waking up always with a full sky of sunshine, when seeing tech nerds, when sitting at homemade cookie studio hidden in a high-end apartment complex, and when seeing people casually sunbathing at a cafe by the rice field.

But Dali is not (yet) becoming Shanghai or the bay area. It has its modern and chic side, but the significant thing is that its originality and authenticity has also been quite well reserved. It is still mostly an ethnic minority town with a predominantly Bai 白族 population. If you are up early, you can see Bai grandmas hanging out at the grocery market with their bamboo baskets on the back. Throughout the day at the street curbs, you will possibly see some other locals wearing bright clothes with coordinating colors. Not like the nearby Lijiang old town which is now exclusively for tourists to some’s disappointment, Dali is a place where locals and outsiders mingle well. But how long it will last like this and at what cost?

Some brief history — the Bai are the descendants of the ethnic Nanzhao (8th and 9th century) and later Dali Kingdom (9th century and three hundred years later), whose ancestors were believed to move from Himalayas. A mixed combination of Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism and local village deities are thought to form its culture.

This is not a gift guide newsletter, but I high recommend you get some Bai tie-dye textiles. With patterns mostly inspired by the nature and the colors mostly being blue, they goes perfectly with your tea tables or bedroom walls.

I also had the most funny conversations with a heritage crafter at a tie-dye (but Naxi style in Lijiang) experience store — I had a lot of questions when I arrived at the store, including the meaning of each pattern, which patterns are unique to Naxi, and their relationships with the Han people.

But I got a friendly scolding later from the crafter. “I thought you were a foreigner because you asked the similarly odd questions as those overseas Chinese”, the uncle said, “there are not much meaning attached to patterns. They are just shapes and colors, up to everyone’s interpretation.”

He continued, “And we are just ordinary people after all, there are not much complication when it comes to how we get along with the Han. ”

His words struck me quite hard and made me wondering whether I am always too much in the mood for cultural novelty. After learning a lot about how sophisticated the society is, I should probably pause for a second, unlearn and celebrate the simplicity of aesthetics and the mutual ground human races all share.

Now we come to the food talk. There is no denying that food is absolutely another highlight in Dali. I even once swore that Yunnan cuisine is one kind of regional food (it is also having greater presence in Chinese cities and around the world) that I will not get tried of — seasonal mushrooms, rice noodles, traditional rice pilaf, sour and spicy fish hotpot, local BBQ, and other ethic food including Tibetan eats. Have it all at Dali!

However, after eating rice noodles continuously for five days straight, my friends and I had all decided that we needed a break and went to “Dali American Bistro” for a brunch deal instead at our last day.

Generation of change

If you need to know about the biggest headlines about China, you go to Twitter. But if you want to investigate the current state of young Chinese, you should probably pay a visit to Dali. To hang out with the young people there and lay flat together with them (tons of part-time gigs if you are looking for one, including cafe baristas, night street vendor owners, guesthouse hosts, bar workers, bloggers, live-streamers, and travel photographers). Yes, before the “quiet quitting” in America, there has been a prominent “laying flat” movement in China already. And ongoing.

Thanks to my dear friends Yaling and Luna, in just a matter of a few days, I had chances to meet a diverse group of new friends — a Beijing-based Chinese media worker who is now looking into invest in web3, a former Alibaba manager who is now a podcast host and freelancer, a Shanghai-based entrepreneur who starts a business in outdoors gears and city camping, the founders of the landmark Dali co-working center Dali Hub, a number of cafe shop owners, and a cookie studio owner and etc. They are all fun, bright and friendly human beings who knows exactly what they are doing and what they want in life. They are originally from big cities such as Beijing, but for some reasons, we only met in Dali. It might be the high-density apartments and wide streets in megacities that have divided us all.

When it comes to the coffee culture in Dali, one thing that I have noticed is baristas there appear to be more engaged, happy and spirited. It is not the “Hiiiiii how’s your dayyyy” vibes you get from Starbucks in America, but something that comes off being more genuine and of substance. One afternoon, I even received a handwritten subscription to the stiff neck I had that day . “Will I see you tomorrow,” asked one female barista as I was stepping out the cafe. “I am going back to Beijing tomorrow,” we then exchanged a sad look to each other. I wish I got to stay longer. You probably don’t get to talk to any happy cafe baristas in Beijing.

In terms of happiness, I am quite impressed by how content the migrants are. Last year at my previous job, my colleagues and I once visited Yunnan and interviewed three Yunnan migrants — a bar owner, AirBnB host, and a craft studio owners. We were amazed to find out that all of them were so satisfied about their move and not miss big cities at all. It is inspirational. Lots of us have been talking and talking about returning to countryside, but most of them will continue with their busy city life after all, including myself. But the more I visit Dali-like towns, the more reminders I have received on how simple lives are we all need after all.

Especially as a Chinese person in late 20s, I am part of the generation that is always being told by the society and government to marry early, have kids (THREE KIDS), and be tolerant about everything. Dali is kind of the exit that we all need to find alternative answers to our livings and challenge socially constructed norms. It is where we can go back to where we were.

That’s next time.

PS:

Related reading is about how some friends and families together transformed a village to a vibrant co-living community in suburb Chengdu: 50个亲朋好友抱团返乡：群居5年，自给自足 , by the video platform Yitiao