Time for a cool change
Urbanites head north for budget homes, rural tranquility
By the time Lyu Zuowei reached Bishui town in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province he had driven more than 3,000 kilometers over four days.
The final 100 km of the journey that started in Wuhan, Hubei province, followed a country road into the Greater Hinggan Mountains.
At the entrance to Bishui, Huzhong district, he stopped the car and lowered the window. "I had never breathed air so fresh," said 32-year-old Lyu. "It felt as if it went through my body and cleaned me out."
The stillness was just as striking. The former forestry town is ringed by mountains, with the Huma River nearby. Its broad, orderly streets had been laid out when thousands of forestry workers and their families lived there, but many of its homes are now empty.
Lyu said it was so quiet he could almost hear a pin drop.
He had come in August 2024 to inspect a courtyard he had already bought online for 16,500 yuan ($2,440) without seeing it in person. Advertised on social media, it included an old brick house, a wooden shed, and a narrow vegetable plot.
Lyu had recently left a publicity job with a State-owned construction company in Wuhan and was searching for a place to stay in the Greater Hinggan Mountains. He had read about the area in textbooks when he was a child, and had always wanted to go there.
He first thought of the place as a northern retreat. Somewhere to visit when the summer was too hot and stay before driving back to Wuhan.
But that first visit lingered in his mind.
In October of that year, when a detached courtyard house with a garage became available, he paid 40,000 yuan for it. The land covered more than 800 square meters. He later bought a third, row-style courtyard dwelling for another 40,000 yuan, bringing his total spending on the three properties to 96,500 yuan.
From July 2025, Lyu began spending longer periods in Bishui. On summer days, he sometimes rose before 4 am. He practiced tai chi and dance, wrote calligraphy, chopped firewood, cooked, tended the yard, and edited photographs and videos for his social media account.
Lyu, who studied dance at university and has always wanted to make it his career, said he felt like he was "actually living".
"A house with a yard here is cheap and the environment is so good. I plan to live and stay here for a while," he said. "I see this as a stage of my life — a time to adjust myself and think again about work and what kind of life I want."
He recently moved to Beijing looking for work, and a young woman is staying in one of his courtyard homes. She teaches Chinese online to students overseas and hopes to spend some time living in the region.
Although he is currently in Beijing, Lyu still feels that big-city life is not for him. In the longer term, he hopes to return to the Greater Hinggan Mountains and transform the courtyard homes he bought into a retreat combining cultural tourism, wellness and arts-based healing.
