I'm 25 and felt suffocated by city life — so I spent 2 months in a youth retirement village in China

04.12.2024 - 01:13 / insider.com

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ren Binglin, a photographer and digital nomad based in China. Ren spent almost two months at a youth retirement village. The following has been translated and edited for length and clarity.

A few days of work in Beijing was all it took for me to realize I needed a break.

In early September, I was finding everything in the capital city too expensive. City life was suffocating me.

I was born in Henan — a province 400 miles south of the capital — but now, at 25, I'm a digital nomad, and there's no longer one part of the country that feels like home. I live in a mix of hostels, bed and breakfasts, and even rented a house from a farmer once. I also try to spend a few weeks a year back with my family.

I love different parts of China for different reasons. I like the climate of Dali, the wooden houses of Shaoxing, my friends in Taihang Mountain, the mornings in Yangshuo, and the nights in Shanghai.

One morning, I started searching for places I could visit up in the mountains. I came across Guanye, a youth retirement village, on Xiaohongshu, China's Instagram-like platform. It was clear it had nothing to do with caregiving or elders, just a lot of nature.

I was intrigued by the pictures of mountains, a swimming pool, and people around my age cooking, hiking, and watching films. I felt I'd get along with them. By noon that same day, I had left.

I bought a train ticket for just over 10 yuan, or $1.38, from Beijing. The village is in Hebei, about 180 miles southwest of Beijing, and the train ride to Baijian, the closest station, took around three hours.

Soon after arriving, I was shown to my room. All of the rooms had mountain views. Mine had floor-to-ceiling windows, a 1.8-meter-long bed, a fridge, a bathroom, and a TV. The TV stayed off for the whole stay.

The room was cheap: 3,600 yuan, or $500, a month, including food and accommodation. It was a courtyard house with rooms surrounding a yard, and the space was around 2,150 square feet.

As a photographer, my income isn't stable. There are times I have nothing coming in for two weeks, but then in one day, I can make enough to cover the month.

The difference between life in the city and life up in the mountains was huge. The quiet in the village was a luxury for me. Sometimes, in the morning, I would hear the sound of goats eating grass. It was wonderful to be woken up that way.

Most of the people at the nursing home were between 20 and 30 — I'm 25. I also came across a handful of people in their 40s and 50s.

I didn't need to put in much effort to meet interesting people. There was a natural flow that attracted all kinds of guests. The managers treated me like a friend, not a customer.

I wasn't the typical