Why China’s Young Urbanites Are Ditching Cities for Villages

After graduating with a degree in art design from Beijing Jiaotong University, most would have expected Li Zezhou to set his sights on a career in a big city. Instead, he returned to the forests and fields he’d known as a child.

In early 2024, he and a friend set up a design studio in a rented two-story building in Bishan, an ancient village in China’s eastern Anhui province. They called it Slime Club, seeing slime molds’ ability to stretch outward and link with other organisms as a metaphor for the kind of collaboration they hoped to achieve among young graduates.

Since then, the collective has transformed its mission to help the local community, swelling from four permanent staff to 11, along with a host of contributors. Most arrive in the village intending on just a brief stay, but few ever leave.

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