纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英欢迎来到大理福尼亚中国年轻人的世外桃源

To find the dance circle in the bed-and-breakfast’s courtyard, drive north from the bedsheet factory converted into a crafts market, toward the vegan canteen urging diners to “walk barefoot in the soil and bathe in the sunshine.” If you see the unmanned craft beer bar where customers pay on the honor system, you’ve gone too far.

要在这家民宿的院子里找到集体舞会，可以从改建成手工艺品市集的床单厂往北走，朝着素食食堂的方向行驶，这家食堂呼吁食客“赤脚走在泥土里，沐浴在阳光下”。如果你看到无人值守、顾客可以通过荣誉系统付款的精酿啤酒吧，那你就已经走过了。

Welcome to the Chinese mountain city of Dali, also sometimes known as Dalifornia, an oasis for China’s disaffected, drifting or just plain curious.

欢迎来到中国山城大理，它有时也被称为“大理福尼亚”，是中国特立独行、漂泊不定或纯粹好奇者的绿洲。

The city’s nickname is a homage to California, and the easy-living, tree-hugging, sun-soaked stereotypes it evokes. It is also a nod to the influx of tech employees who have flocked there since the rise of remote work during the pandemic, to code amid the picturesque surroundings, nestled between snow-capped, 10,000-foot peaks in southwest China, on the shores of glistening Erhai Lake.

这座城市的昵称致敬的是加州，也是对那里轻松自在、绿树成荫、阳光普照刻板印象的反映。同时，这也认可了一种趋势：自远程办公在疫情期间变得流行以来，大量科技行业从业者涌入了这座风景如画的城市，在中国西南部白雪皑皑、海拔三四千米的山峰之间，在波光粼粼的洱海之畔编程。

The area has long been a hub for backpackers and artists, who were lured by its cheap rents and idyllic old town, where ancient city gates and white-walled courtyard homes point to the history of the Bai ethnic minority, who have lived there for thousands of years.

这个地区长期以来一直是背包客和艺术家的聚集地，廉价的房租和田园诗般的古镇吸引着他们，古城门和白墙庭院昭示着白族的历史，这个民族已在这里生活了数千年。

But recently, Dali has filled with a different crop of wandering souls: young people from China’s megacities, fleeing the intense lifestyles that so many of them once aspired to. Worn out by the high cost of living, cutthroat competition, record youth unemployment and increasingly suffocating political environment, they have turned Dali into China’s destination of the moment.

但最近，大理聚集了另一批漂泊的灵魂：来自中国大城市的年轻人，他们逃离了许多人曾经向往的紧张生活方式。高昂的生活成本、残酷的竞争、创纪录的青年失业率，以及日益令人窒息的政治环境让他们疲惫不堪，他们把大理变成了中国当下的世外桃源。

“Young people who can’t fit into the mainstream can only look for a city on the margins,” said Zhou Xiaoming, 28, who moved from Shanghai three years ago.

28岁的周晓明（音）三年前从上海搬来大理，他说：“本身融入不了主流的年轻人就只能找边缘化城市。”

Mr. Zhou, always a free spirit, had worked in Shanghai as a teacher at an alternative school. But he found life there too expensive and wanted to explore even more non-mainstream teaching methods. Dali had many to sample — an experimental kindergarten that taught students to hike, another focused on crafts, and many home-schoolers. Mr. Zhou now privately teaches one student, in a village nestled between tea fields on the outskirts of town.

周先生向来崇尚自由，曾在上海一所采取创新教育方式的学校担任教师。但他发现那里的生活成本太高，而且想探索更多非主流的教学方法。大理有许多可供借鉴的——有教学生徒步的实验型幼儿园，有专注于手工制作的幼儿园，还有许多在家自学的人群。现在，周先生在城郊茶田之间的一个村庄里私下教授一名学生。

“Dali is remote and pretty tolerant and very fluid, and it has all kinds of people. And most of those people are weird,” Mr. Zhou said.

“大理应该属于比较边缘性的城市，或者说包容度比较高、流动性特别大，然后各种各样的人都有，大部分都是奇奇怪怪的人，”周晓明说。

Depending on your point of view, Dali, population 560,000, can feel like paradise or a parody.

人口56万的大理既可以是天堂，也可以是拙劣的模仿，这取决于你的看法。

On a recent Wednesday, a Chinese fire dancer gyrated to the drone of a didgeridoo, an Indigenous Australian instrument, in the courtyard of an Israeli musician’s home. A few miles away, throngs of young people lining the streets of the old town peddled cheap fortunetelling, as pulsing music poured out of nearby bars. At a 24-hour bookstore, a reading group scattered on floor cushions discussed Shen Congwen, a prominent 20th-century writer.

不久前的一个周三，在一位以色列音乐家的院子里，一名中国火舞演员随着澳大利亚土著乐器迪吉里杜管的嗡嗡声翩翩起舞。几公里外，成群的年轻人站在古城的街道两旁，兜售廉价的算命服务，附近的酒吧里传出阵阵音乐。在一家24小时营业的书店里，一个读书小组分散地坐在地垫上，讨论20世纪著名作家沈从文。

A seemingly inescapable buzzword in Dali is healing. Healing yoga, healing camping trips, even healing coffee shops. At a co-working space on a recent Tuesday, about two dozen people listened to a presentation on combating loneliness. At the bed-and-breakfast’s dance circle, participants were encouraged to rediscover their inner child.

在大理， “治愈”似乎是个绕不开的流行词。治愈瑜伽、治愈露营，甚至有治愈咖啡店。最近的一个周二，在一个联合办公空间里，有二十来人听了一场关于如何战胜孤独的演讲。在民宿的集体舞会上，参与者被鼓励重新发现自己内心的童真。

The therapeutic atmosphere was especially thick at Veggie Ark, a sprawling complex north of the old town that houses the vegan canteen, yoga studios, gong lessons and a dye workshop. Eventually, it would also include a “self-sufficiency lab” that Tang Guanhua, 34, was building in the courtyard: a wooden dome, constructed by hand, that when completed would be powered by solar energy, and serve as an exhibition space for handicrafts made with local materials.

素方舟的治愈氛围尤其浓厚。这是位于古城北部的一个庞大建筑群，里面有素食食堂、瑜伽室、锣鼓课和一个染料车间。将来，它还会有一个“自给自足实验室”，34岁的唐冠华正在院子里建造它，这是一个手工建造的木制穹顶，建成后将由太阳能供电，并作为用当地材料制作的手工艺品的展示空间。

Mr. Tang wanted the lab to encourage visitors to try out more sustainable lifestyles. When he had pioneered back-to-nature living in China more than a decade ago, brewing homemade vinegar and generating his own electricity, many considered him strange. Now, eight people had paid to participate in building the dome.

唐冠华希望该实验室能鼓励游客尝试更可持续的生活方式。十多年前，他在中国开创了回归自然的生活方式，自酿食醋，自己发电，许多人认为他很奇怪。现在，已经有八个人付费参与建造穹顶。

“Before, everything was fine, everyone went to work. Now, so many things aren’t right,” he said over a dinner of vegan hot pot. “People are thinking about what to do with themselves.”

“以前可能没事，都上着班。现在很多东西都不行了，”他在一顿素食火锅晚餐上说，“他们在考虑自己何去何从。”

Some of the new arrivals say they want to stay forever; others acknowledge they are looking just to try on an alternative lifestyle before returning to the city grind.

一些新来的人说，他们想永远呆在这里；还有一些人承认，他们只是想在回到城市之前尝试另一种生活方式。

Still, even the most cynical observer would admit that the city feels tangibly more open and relaxed than most other places in China.

不过，即使是最刻薄的观察家也会承认，与中国其他大多数地方相比，这座城市给人的感觉明显更加开放和放松。

“People here won’t deliberately try to assign you labels. You can just be yourself and be seen,” said Joey Chen, a 22-year-old freelance writer who had dropped out of college and moved to Dali a month earlier from Jiangxi Province.

“（这里的人）不会去刻意地识别你的身份标签，你能够真正做一个人，去真正地被看见，”22岁的自由撰稿人乔伊·陈（音）说。她从大学辍学，一个月前从江西搬到了大理。

Ms. Chen was lounging in the attic reading nook of a bookstore, perusing the Simone de Beauvoir novel “All Men Are Mortal.” Downstairs, the walls were decorated with photos of Kafka and Che Guevara.

当时，她正懒洋洋地躺在一家书店阁楼的阅读角里，细读着西蒙娜·德·波伏娃的小说《人都是要死的》(All Men Are Mortal)。楼下的墙上挂着卡夫卡和切·格瓦拉的照片。

The openness extends to potentially sensitive topics, too. At another coffee shop, a rainbow flag was tucked into the rafters. A different bookstore offered volumes on religious topics, such as American Indian shamanism, Christianity and the history of Tibet.

这种开放性也延伸到了潜在的敏感话题。在另一家咖啡店，房梁上插着一面彩虹旗。另一家书店提供有关宗教主题的书籍，比如美国印第安萨满教、基督教和西藏历史。

The question is how long Dali can remain such a haven.

问题是，大理还能充当多久的避风港。

Tourists and influencers have flocked to Dali, wielding selfie sticks and posing in hot pink cars that businesses rent out for photo shoots. Throughout the old town, kitschy souvenir shops have replaced handicraft stalls and bookstores. The lakeshore teems with slickly designed bed-and-breakfasts that wouldn’t be out of place in Shanghai or Beijing, often run by moneyed arrivals from those very places.

游客和网红们纷纷涌向大理，挥舞着自拍杆，在商家出租的粉色汽车里摆姿势拍照。在整个古城，俗气的纪念品商店取代了手工艺品摊和书店。湖边到处都是设计精美的民宿，放在上海或北京也不会显得逊色，经营者往往都是从这些地方来的有钱人。

Rents have soared, driving longtime residents out of the old town, toward more remote villages.

租金飙升，迫使老居民离开古城，迁往更偏远的村庄。

And nowhere in China is truly immune to the tightening political climate — as Lucia Zhao, the owner of the bookstore where Ms. Chen was reading Beauvoir, recently learned.

在中国，没有哪个地方能真正不受日益紧张的政治气候的影响——在乔伊·陈阅读波伏娃的那家书店，老板露西娅·赵（音）最近就体会到了这一点。

Ms. Zhao, 33, moved to Dali from Chengdu in 2022 after being laid off from a tech company. She opened her bookstore, which focuses on art, feminism and philosophy, because she wanted to create a space where people could relearn to think critically, she said.

33岁的露西娅·赵被一家科技公司解雇后，于2022年从成都搬到大理。她说，她开的这家书店专注于艺术、女权主义和哲学，因为她想创造一个人们可以重新学习批判性思考的空间。

But in August, officials suddenly confiscated all her books, on the grounds that Ms. Zhao had applied for only a regular business license, not a license specifically for selling publications. She shut down for several months while applying for the license and rebuilding her inventory.

但在8月，官员突然没收了她所有的书，理由是露西娅·赵只申请了普通的营业执照，而不是专门用于销售出版物的许可证。申请许可证和重建库存期间，她停业了几个月。

She was now more cautious in her book selection. Local officials dropped in occasionally to inspect the store and had recently scrutinized a display of antiwar books she had put out.

她现在在选书时更加谨慎了。当地官员偶尔会来店里视察，最近还仔细检查了她陈列的反战书籍。

“You definitely have more latitude in Dali than in cities like Beijing and Chengdu,” Ms. Zhao said. “But compared to when I got here last year, the space is shrinking.”

“我觉得它一定是（比成都、北京）有更大的自由度，”赵女士说。“但是跟我去年刚来的时候相比，它的尺度在缩小。”

Still, for many people in Dali, politics seems to be one of the last things on their mind. And that may be less out of fear than the fact that they came to Dali precisely to avoid those kinds of worldly headaches.

然而，对于大理的许多人来说，政治似乎是他们最不关心的事情之一。这可能不是出于恐惧，而是因为他们来大理正是为了避免那些世俗的烦恼。

In the kitchen of a co-living space popular with coders and entrepreneurs, Li Bo, a 30-year-old programmer, recalled his own experience with the limits of Dali’s tolerance. He had moved to Dali in October after growing tired of his office job in Beijing and quickly befriended the other residents at the youth space. By day, they worked together on the rooftop patio; at night, they barhopped, laptops in tow.

在一个深受程序员和创业者欢迎的合住空间的厨房里，30岁的程序员李波（音）回忆起自己在大理触犯容忍边界的经历。去年10月，他厌倦了在北京的办公室工作，搬到了大理，很快就和这个青年空间的其他居民成为了朋友。白天，他们一起在屋顶露台上工作；到了晚上，他们带着笔记本电脑去酒吧。

Not long after arriving, on Halloween, he had dressed up as a Covid testing worker, the hazmat-suited figures who came to symbolize China’s three years of stringent restrictions. It was a lark, he insisted, not political, but he was detained briefly by the police.

抵达后不久，在万圣节，他打扮成一名新冠病毒检测人员，这些身穿防护服的人物象征着中国三年来的严格限制。他坚称这是闹着玩，与政治无关，但他还是被警方短暂拘留了。

But amid the bonfire parties, hikes and open mics the town had to offer, Mr. Li had better things to do than dwell on the negative. Like his latest project: developing an A.I. fortunetelling bot, which he planned to offer to fellow bargoers the next night for 70 cents per reading.

但在小镇上的篝火派对、徒步旅行和公开演讲中，李波有更多的事情要做，而不是沉浸在负面情绪中。比如他的最新项目：开发一个人工智能算命机器人，他计划第二天晚上以每次五块钱的价格向酒吧里的朋友们提供服务。