Commentary
A town in southern China near the border with Burma (Myanmar) is getting international attention, but only part of the story is told.
The town, called Dali, is portrayed by the
Financial Times,
Reuters, and the
Los Angeles Times as a mostly idyllic rural land where youth and tourists from around China congregate to escape the grind of long hours, consumerism, high prices, and authoritarianism of the big cities.
Some are college-educated “digital nomads,” work on laptops in cafes, and change cities with the seasons. Others supply tourists with folk handicrafts or lend a hand in the rice fields. The most recent surge of interest in “Dalifornia” arose from its lighter
pandemic controls and a
soap opera in which a young woman quits her tough city job and moves to the town, where she falls for an entrepreneur.
The city of Dali now has more than 600,000 people, with an estimated
100,000 alternative-minded Chinese living in the prefecture. The rise of Dali is fueled by ballooning youth unemployment that frees young people for personal growth through yoga, tattoos, or another round of drinking and hot pot with friends.
This type of “rural” living isn’t exactly what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has in mind. The CCP prefers a neo-Maoist back-to-the-land movement that prioritizes manual work and the endurance of hardships colloquially known as “
eating bitterness.”
The counterculture developing in Dali instead epitomizes the “
lying flat” and “let it rot” embrace of a slower lifestyle, some political discussion, and sometimes a bit of marijuana use. As far back as 1998, the
Los Angeles Times called Dali a “marijuana mecca where users light up openly in cafes at night.” At the time, the regime estimated that there were 5,000 acres of pot around Dali, including in the wild and on roadsides. The Bai ethnic minority, native to the region, makes hemp linen for traditional indigo tie-dye clothing. In an October 2023 broadcast, the regime media outlet
CGTN showed some of this clothing for sale to tourists, including one scarf emblazoned with the image of a marijuana leaf. In the video, an American named Brian Linden praised the hemp clothing and other local wares.
Mr. Linden is an unlikely regime poster boy and one of the most famous figures in Dali. He first worked in China in
1984, then returned after years of work in international education to invest in restoring an ancient merchant’s home in Dali for use as a community center, hotel, and model of sustainable tourism. He plowed hundreds of thousands of dollars into the project, which could be taken away at any time by the CCP because foreigners in China aren’t allowed to own land. They can only get long-term leases.
During the interview, a seemingly nervous, hyper-respectful, and glad-handing Mr. Linden puts a brave face on his and his family’s predicament. He’s generally self-defensive while remaining consistent with CCP talking points, for example, that his hotel is a social enterprise meant to help the community or that he’s telling China’s story to the world. At other times, he pushes the boundary, mentioning that the locals call him “mayor”; promoting local diversity, including himself; and worrying about whether all the new tourism is changing the ancient culture of Dali.
Not shown by CGTN or the recent mainstream media is the religious, spiritual, and political persecution imposed on Dali that could make someone like Mr. Linden so nervous. The persecution extends historically to low-scale violence in the
1950s against adherents of Christianity. Catholics and Protestants in Dali were then subjected to “sophisticated containment, infiltration, spying, and coercion, with a corresponding restrained use of violence” by the CCP, according to researcher Yongjia Liang at Zhejiang University. The goal was to “remove the Christian transcendence with a communist one,” he wrote.
That persecution continues today. In 2022, the Yunnan Province Dali Municipal Bureau of Ethnic and Religious Affairs fined a 41-year-old Christian man approximately
$20,000 for an unauthorized religious training event in Dali.
In 2016, a Chinese
couple who lived in Dali and posted news and photos of mass protests from around China had their social media accounts regularly deleted. When they refused to stop, they were nearly run over while traveling on a motorbike by what appeared to be regime thugs. The near miss made them crash. The CCP eventually arrested them for “picking quarrels and provoking troubles.” Lu Yuyu was sentenced to four years in prison, and his girlfriend to two years. It appears that the police threatened her to force the couple apart, and she unhappily married another man. Mr. Lu was deported to another town and banned from returning to Dali or traveling to Shanghai, Beijing, or Xinjiang.
The
Falun Gong spirituality, which the CCP banned in 1999, is another object of repression. In late May 2007, for example, a Falun Gong
source details four cases of persecution of female practitioners in Dali, all subjected to abuse and two who were fined 5,000 yuan (
$650).
One, aged 50, was imprisoned for 2 1/2 months and subjected to physical abuse before being sent to a forced labor camp for refusing to renounce her faith even while in prison. CCP thugs broke into the home of another, aged 73, arresting and fining her. The thugs broke the jaw of a third, in her 40s, while stuffing it with dirty plastic wrap from the street. She was imprisoned and fined. Another, also in her 40s, was arrested and forced into homelessness.
The idyllic portrayal of rural freedom in Dali is an inaccurate and one-sided story. The reality is that the oppressive hand of the CCP reaches Dali and most everywhere in China—and often beyond.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
