aNow in her mid-30s, Sion Yidan believes most of her friends are expecting second or even third children. But Mr. Xiong has more than 12 of hers. Lucky, a stray dog from Bangkok, jumped into the taxi with him and didn’t leave. Sibling geese, Sophie and Ben, crow from morning until night. The goats Boop and Pan have a romantic relationship. Dumpling the hedgehog likes to have his belly rubbed every now and then. The list goes on.
Xiong raises chicks on an 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous region in northern Thailand’s Chiang Mai province. Xiong has chronicled his journey from a crypto marketing executive in Beijing to a farmer in Thailand on social media. She is particularly popular on Xiaohongshu, an Instagram-like app for women, where she has more than 38,000 followers. Her explanation shows people that switching to a slower pace of life is “not just a fantasy or an idealistic thing, it’s very doable,” she says.
Moving to Thailand allowed her to have a “pluralistic version” of herself, where she could be a farmer, an influencer, a businesswoman, and a single woman without children, away from the pressures of Chinese society. did it.
Xiong said Chinese people, especially those who feel that the country that was meant to be a 21st century powerhouse, has little to offer them personally socially, intellectually and spiritually. It’s part of a rapidly growing trend among millennials. In recent years, the economic downturn and the lingering trauma of the isolation of China’s strict zero-corona regime have forced many of the country’s otherwise considered successful people to emigrate.
“It felt like the end of the world,” Linda Xu says of Shanghai’s lockdown. Until March 2022, she was the general manager of a successful skateboarding start-up in Shanghai, but she now spends a lot of time in Chiang Mai, where she’s thinking about what her next chapter will be. I’m thinking about it.”
art, books and freedom of speech
Chiang Mai, a popular tourist destination for backpackers and nature lovers, has become an unlikely second home for thousands of new Chinese immigrants.is more than 110,000 The number of Chinese nationals who applied for long-term visas in Thailand between January and September 2022 is close to the total number in 2019. Nearly half of members of Thailand’s “Elite Card” visa scheme offer long-term stay rights for fees starting at 900,000 yen. The Thai baht (19,400 pounds) is from China. Thousands of them have settled in Chiang Mai, with or without legalized marijuana, drawn to the city’s laid-back atmosphere and tolerant social environment.
Cannabis has never been freely available in the People’s Republic of China. But China’s big cities are full of independent bookstores, movie theaters, and social venues where like-minded people can openly discuss feminism, LGBT issues, philosophy, and other topics that may interest them. It wasn’t that long ago that this happened. Although certain topics were always prohibited, the country’s intellectual class crossed these red lines with relative ease. But after more than a decade of increasingly iron rule by Xi Jinping, few, if any, of these spaces remain.
So Nowhere Bookstore opened in Chiang Mai in November 2023, after opening a sister store in Taipei the previous year. Founded by Zhang Jieping, a journalist from mainland China who is now based at Harvard University, this small space covers topics such as the 2022 White Paper protests and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, which are impossible to openly discuss in China. Materials on various topics are stored. “There are a lot of books that you can’t see or buy in mainland China,” says a young designer from Guangzhou who had the opportunity to visit the store while vacationing in Thailand. Otherwise, he says, he has to rely on “pieces of information.” ” China’s Internet.
In addition to selling books, Nowhere also hosts Chinese language events on a wide range of topics for Chiang Mai’s growing Chinese community. At a recent event, 62-year-old author Jeong Se-ping spoke about spending his retirement in exile. Mr. Zheng started his career as a police officer in the 1980s, but quit after the Tiananmen massacre and later became a well-known poet and writer under the pen name Ye Fu. He arrived in Thailand in late 2019 and heard from a doctor in Wuhan, the capital of his home province of Hubei, about the virus spreading at a dangerous rate in the city.
“Thailand is certainly not as safe as the US, Europe or Japan,” he said of the fate of Gui Minhai, a Swedish bookseller who was kidnapped from Thailand in 2015 and reappeared in Chinese custody several months later. I speak with great pain. Thai dissident. “But it’s still a country that basically has freedom of speech. It basically protects human rights.”
Chung is part of an old group of expatriates who established a combination retirement village and arts community on the outskirts of Chiang Mai. Unlike millennial transplants, this older generation was formed during China’s more liberal era of his 1980s and has a more political perspective on the country’s course. “We were a generation full of hope and made great sacrifices and efforts, but ultimately failed,” Chung said. “Chinese young people today are even more desperate than we were then. In the coming years, they will lose their jobs, their livelihoods will be in jeopardy, and their rights as human beings will be gradually lost. I guess.”
For artist Do Yinhong, part of the reason he moved was because he believed “art is dead” in his home country. “I’m not satisfied spiritually or materially,” he says. In addition to his low cost of living in Thailand, Du was drawn to the country’s Buddhism. Thailand is considered to be home to the second largest number of Buddhists in the world after China, and the proportion of Buddhists in the population is much higher in Thailand, with 90% of adults being Buddhist. It claims to be. According to Pew Research Center. “Chinese Buddhism is Buddhism in quotation marks,” says Du, 48. “There is no real Buddhism in China, there is no real Christianity, there is no real Islam…they are all fake. Of course there are many really pious people, good people in China But what they do and what they believe is in a particular political environment, and they cannot have real faith.”
Many Chinese living in Thailand say they are attracted to the idea of a less consumerist and more peaceful lifestyle based on Thai Buddhist principles. The appeal of Thailand, one of the most unequal countries in East and Southeast Asia, may be due to its low cost of living, which means relatively wealthy Chinese can live a more leisurely life in Chiang Mai than they can in Chongqing. Nevertheless, the space Thailand offers for those seeking a more spiritual life is another attraction for Chinese people who are increasingly feeling stifled at home.
FEstablished in 2010, Panyaden International School is an almost entirely bamboo-based school that provides an education based on Buddhist principles. Babana. Staff participate in an annual silent meditation retreat, and students harvest their own rice from nearby rice fields and learn about the efforts that go into feeding the planet. More than 10% of students are from China, and tuition fees can reach up to 549,000 Thai baht (£11,900) a year, still only about a third of the cost at Beijing’s top international schools. Gloria Niu, a Chinese language instructor at Chiang Mai University whose own daughter attends Panyaden, believes the school provides children with an international and diverse education while still being rooted in Asian values. Chinese parents say they are attracted to the fact that they are One of the “12 wise habits” that teachers at the school teach children is the value of “knowing the right amount,” which refers to the idea of not having too much or too little. There is also a spiritual spirit within the school. Advisor. This is an approach to education that would be unthinkable in mainstream, competitive Chinese schools.
Zion’s parents say they feel the money they spent on her education was “flushed down the toilet.” But living in Thailand was her “only way to be free to do what I wanted,” she reflects. She said: “It’s not really by active choice, but I live this feminist lifestyle.”
