A creator who grew up in Beijing and lived there for 20 years just bought himself a house in a small town in the Qilian Mountains — for ¥70,000.
The town is Tan Shan Ling, in Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County, Gansu. He did not find it through a property search. He found it in 2024 on a motorcycle trip toward Qinghai Lake, riding through the mountains, and liked it on the spot. In 2025 he came back and spent a month there before deciding to buy and stay.
His own framing is simple: the big city no longer fits him, and the older he gets, the more he wants a quiet life in a mountain town. He is not retiring from life — he plans to keep riding.
There is a piece of math here worth sitting with. ¥70,000 is not a Beijing down payment. It is not even a Beijing parking space. It is a whole house, in a place where the main amenity is quiet. The real price of the move was not the money. It was deciding what he actually wanted, and then accepting a smaller stage for it.
Most "escape the city" stories stop at the fantasy. This one is useful because of the sequence: pass through by accident, return on purpose, live there for a month before committing, and only then buy. That is a cheap way to test a big decision — a month of rent against a lifetime of wondering.
The video is in Chinese, and it is worth watching even if you only catch the scenery and the pace of the place: 7万元我在甘肃天祝小镇买下自己的一套房
— Terry Note, airgrix.com
Top comments (0)