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It’s a bucolic existence, Fu’s voice-over explains, away from the pollution, traffic, and crowds of China’s biggest cities. “People ask why digital nomads are so happy; it’s because we live next to green fields and pristine water every day, and spend on average 3,000 to 6,000 a month. I’m emotionally and spiritually wealthy, and my wallet is full too.”
But despite Fu’s utopian social media content, the digital nomad life is far more complex than influencers and entrepreneurs would have you believe. In the US, most digital nomads quit the lifestyle within three years, according to a 2020 report by MBO Partners. In China, pulling up roots and living on the go is a risk and stress only some can afford—mainly affluent, educated, unmarried (or at least childless) urbanites. Keeping income flowing when you work remotely is also a challenge, and China’s location-based social security schemes, leave this floating population uninsured in their temporary homes.
What’s more, it’s unclear what benefits digital nomads bring to the communities they inhabit: They don’t stay permanently, they often work and generate value for companies based elsewhere, and their presence may drive up the local cost of living.
“Two to three years ago, not many people in China understood what digital nomadism was,” says Fu, who now runs Dali Hub, a co-working space for digital nomads, but now “more people are accepting this lifestyle.” On social media, accounts extolling the virtues of being a digital nomad (literally translated as 数字游民) are proliferating. A digital nomad couple, blogging under the name “Nomad Husband and Wife,” have garnered over 166,000 followers since 2019 on social media app Xiaohongshu under their account name. One of China’s most famous digital nomads, Jarod Zhang, has over 1,600 paid subscribers on his website, runs a Douban group with over 3,800 members, and a Discord chat with over 1,390 members including both current and prospective digital nomads.
Exact numbers in China are difficult to obtain, but there’s probably now thousands of digital nomads across the country, clustered mainly in popular destinations like Yunnan’s Dali, Anji in Zhejiang province, and on the tropical island of Hainan province. That’s far below the estimated 11 million who identify as digital nomads in the US in 2020, but in 2021, a user survey by travel website Mafengwo found over 60 percent of those born after 1980 were eager to try being digital nomads.
Fu was traveling in South America before the pandemic, when she returned to China and stayed briefly in her home province of Hainan before going to Dali. She was drawn by the “cost-effectiveness” of Dali as well as the scenery, weather, and “openness and multicultural vibe.” Now, “I’m absolutely location independent and can arrange my own work schedule. This gives me a lot more freedom,” she says, noting she no longer endures a long commute, office politics, or competition for promotions.
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