Dali, Yunnan: where the hearts of moderns belong

Zheng Yuantao, 33, a translator, moved to Dali, a town in southwest China, from Beijing in July.  “I’ve never felt so free in my life,” he said.

33岁的翻译郑远涛今年7月从北京搬到了西南的大理。“我从来没有感觉这么自由，”他说。

Dali, China — A typical morning for Lin Liya, a native of Shanghai transplanted to this ancient town in southwest China, goes like this: See her 3-year-old son off to school near the mountains; go for a half-hour run on the shores of Erhai Lake; and browse the local market for fresh vegetables and meat.

中国大理——对移居到中国西南这座老城的上海人林利亚来说，上午往往是这样度过的：送3岁的儿子去附近山脚下上幼儿园；到洱海边跑步半小时；然后到本地集市看看新鲜蔬菜和肉类。

She finished her run one morning beneath cloudless blue skies and sat down with a visitor from Beijing in the lakeside boutique hotel started by her and her husband.

一天早上，她在万里无云的蓝天下跑完步，与北京来的游客坐在湖边的旅馆里。这家精品酒店是她和丈夫二人创办的。

“I think luxury is sunshine, good air and good water,” she said. “But in the big city, you can’t get those things.”

“我觉得阳光、空气好和水好才是奢侈，”她说。“但是在大城市里，你得不到这些东西。”

At a time when hundreds of millions of Chinese, many poor farmers, are leaving their country homesteads to find work and tap into the energy of China’s dynamic cities, a small number of urban dwellers have decided to make a reverse migration. 

为了找工作并投身到充满活力的中国城市之中，数亿民众背井离乡去往城里，其中许多是贫穷的农民。与此同时，却有一小群城里人决定逆向迁移。

They have staked out greener lives in small enclaves, from central Anhui Province to remote Tibet. Many are Chinese bobos, or bourgeois bohemians, and they say that besides escaping pollution and filth, they want to be unshackled from the material drives of the cities — what Ms. Lin derided as a focus on “what you’re wearing, where you’re eating, comparing yourself with others.”

他们在小片的世外桃源安家，过着更为绿色的生活。这样的地方既存在于中部的安徽，也出现在偏远的西藏。其中许多人是中国的“波波族”，或曰“小资”。他们表示，这不光是为了逃离污秽之地，还是因为希望从城市的物欲中解脱出来。正如林女士说的，城里关注的是，“你穿什么、吃什么，拿自己跟别人攀比。”

Lin Liya, 34, a native of Shanghai who moved two years ago to Dali, in Yunnan Province, now runs every day along Erhai Lake.

34岁的上海人林利亚两年前移居大理。她现在每天在洱海边跑步。

The town of Dali in Yunnan Province, nestled between a wall of 13,000-foot mountains and one of China’s largest freshwater lakes, is a popular destination. Increasingly, the indigenous ethnic Bai people of the area are leasing their village homes to ethnic Han, the dominant group in China, who turn up with suitcases and backpacks. They come with one-way tickets from places like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, all of which have roaring economies but also populations of 15 million people or more.

云南大理是流行的去处之一。这座小城背靠13000英尺高的陡峭大山，面向中国最大的淡水湖之一。当地的白族人越来越多地将他们的村屋出租给带着行李箱和背包前来的汉人——中国人口中占绝大多数的民族。他们来自北京、上海、广州和深圳等地，手持的是单程票。这些大城市全都经济繁荣，人口却起码有1500万。

On Internet forums, the new arrivals to Dali discuss how to rent a house, where to shop, how to make a living and what schools are best for their children. Their presence is everywhere in the cobblestone streets of the old town. They run cafes, hotels and bookstores, and the younger ones sit on the streets selling trinkets from blankets.

在互联网论坛上，刚移居大理的人们会交流如何租房、去哪里购物、怎样谋生，以及最好送小孩去哪里上学。在这座古城里的弹石街道上，这些新移民随处可见。他们经营着餐吧、旅馆或书店，较为年轻的则坐在街边，兜售毯子上的廉价物品。

Some become farmers here, and some spend their days home schooling their children. Their presence has transformed Dali and surrounding villages into a cross between Provence and Haight-Ashbury.

有人在当地务农，有人则在家里自己教育孩子。他们的存在，让大理及周边的村庄变成了普罗旺斯与海特-阿什伯里的混合体。

One magnet is the village of Shuanglang, which became a draw after the famous Yunnan natives Yang Liping, a dancer, and Zhao Qing, an artist, built homes there. As at other lakeside villages, the immigrants, some with immense wealth, live near fishermen and farmers.

双廊村是新移民流连的地区之一。自打著名的云南舞蹈家杨丽萍和艺术家赵青在此建房之后，双廊变得颇具吸引力。与其他沿湖的村落一样，包括一些巨富在内的移民与当地的渔民和农夫比邻而居。

“All kinds of people come here with different dreams,” said Ye Yongqing, 55, an ethnic Bai artist from the region who has lived mostly in cities, including London, but bought a home here five years ago. “Some people imagine this place as Greece or Italy or Bali.”

“来这里的每个人都带着不同的梦，”55岁的叶永青说。他是一名白族艺术家，来自云南，过去大部分时候在伦敦等城市生活。五年前，他在这里购买了一处房产。“有些人会把这里想象成希腊、意大利，或者巴厘岛。”

“Dali is one of the few places in China that still has a close tie to the earth,” he added, sitting in front of a table of squashes in his garden courtyard. “A lot of villages in China have become empty shells. Dali is a survivor of this phenomenon.”

“中国没几个地方保持了人与自然的亲近，大理算是一个，”叶永青坐在自家庭院里，面前的桌子上摆满了佛手瓜。“很多中国农村变成了空巢，大理则避免了这种现象。”

Ms. Lin said she first fell in love with Dali when she came as a backpacker in 2006. She returned twice before moving here. In 2010, on the third visit, she and her husband, whom she had met trekking in Yunnan, looked for land to lease to build a hotel on Erhai Lake. It has not all been easy going, Ms. Lin said, citing negotiations and misunderstandings with local officials, villagers and employees.

林女士透露，让她爱上大理的是2006年的一次背包旅行。此后，她两次回来，最终移居此处。她和丈夫就是在云南徒步旅行期间相识的。2010年，也就是她第三次来到大理的时候，两人开始在洱海边寻找一块可以租来兴建客栈的地皮。林女士称，此事并非一帆风顺，比如要与当地官员、村民和员工沟通，消除误解。

“We just wanted to switch to a different life,” said Ms. Lin, who had lived in Shanghai as well as Guangzhou. “My friends in Shanghai are struggling there — not only in their work, but also just to live. The prices are too high, even higher than in Europe. They become crazy, go mad.”

“我们就是想换一种全新的生活，”她说。来大理前，她曾居住在上海和广州。“我上海的朋友真是疲于奔命，不光是工作，还有单纯的生活问题。物价太高了，比欧洲还高。把人都逼疯了，神经质了。”

Ms. Lin moved here less than two years after giving birth to a son. “It’s good for the baby because it’s like my mother’s childhood,” she said. “My mother’s childhood in Shanghai — the air was still clean, you could see blue skies, there was clean water.”

生下儿子不到两年，林女士搬到了大理。“这对宝宝有好处，就像我妈妈小时候一样，”她说。“我妈在上海长大，那时候空气很好，能看到蓝天，水也很干净。”

Song Yan, 31, held a meeting of a book club in the cafe bookstore, Song’s Nest, she opened in Dali in the spring.

31岁的宋颜今年春天在大理开了一家名为宋巢的咖啡书吧。图为在此地举办的读书会。

That is a common refrain among parents here. One afternoon, four mothers, all urban refugees, sat outside a bookstore cafe, Song’s Nest, practicing English with one another. “The one thing we all have in common is we moved here to raise our children in a good environment,” one woman said.

这种说法可以从移居大理的父母们口中反复听到。一天下午，四名母亲坐在名为宋巢的咖啡书吧外练习英语。她们都是城市难民。“我们的一个共同点是，搬到这里来是为了在良好的环境里抚养孩子，”其中一人说。

The bookshop’s owner, Song Yan, moved here this year and translates books by an Indian philosopher popular with Chinese spiritual seekers. One night, she and another translator and urban refugee, Zheng Yuantao, 33, talked over dinner about their moves.

这家咖啡书吧的老板宋颜是今年搬来的。她翻译的一位印度哲学家的书籍深受中国灵修者的欢迎。一天晚上，她和同为城市难民、33岁的翻译郑远涛在餐桌上交流搬家的心得。

“I’ve never felt so free in my life,” Mr. Zheng said. “I grew up as a city boy, and I never realized how much I like living close to nature.”

“我从来没有感觉这么自由，”郑远涛说。“我从小在城市长大，从来没有意识到我这么喜欢亲近大自然。”

From the nearby lakeside village of Caicun, Huang Xiaoling, a photographer, flies back to Beijing to shoot portraits and events for clients. She had once lived in a courtyard home in the Chinese capital, but fled in September with her 3-year-old son and husband, an American who works remotely as a technology director for a New York publishing company.

住在附近才村的黄晓玲是名摄影师。她会从这个湖畔小村飞回北京为客户拍摄肖像和活动照片。她以前住在首都北京的四合院里，今年9月带着3岁的儿子和美国丈夫搬到了这里。她的丈夫为纽约的一家出版公司担任技术总监，远程办公。

“I’m still productive even though I don’t go into an office,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s the weather and the environment, or just me feeling that, ‘Oh, I got out of the cave that I wanted to escape.’ ”

“虽然现在不去办公室了，我的工作还是很有成果，”她说。“我不知道是什么原因，天气、环境，还是说我感觉到，‘啊，我摆脱了一直想要逃离的那个黑洞。’”