The Italian-style watchtowers and replica Renaissance architecture of “Life in Venice” stand almost empty on China’s eastern coast. But for 28-year-old Sasa Chen, this ghost town development represents something else entirely: freedom.
According to sources, Chen pays just 1,200 yuan ($168) monthly for her apartment in this semi-abandoned housing complex in Jiangsu province. The rent is so affordable that she’s managed to retire before hitting 30, walking away from a high-pressure finance career in Shanghai that once earned her 700,000 yuan ($98,480) annually.
“I have all the time in the world, the freedom of doing whatever I want,” said Chen. “I am living the life that I want.”
Chen is part of a growing wave of young Chinese professionals abandoning the country’s megacities for small towns and overlooked developments, taking advantage of rock-bottom housing prices that have plummeted since the COVID pandemic. It marks a major shift from previous generations that prioritized upward mobility and flocked to booming urban centers in search of opportunity.
The “Life in Venice” development was conceived in the early 2010s as a luxury weekend retreat for wealthy Shanghai residents, promising seaside tranquility across 46,000 units. But demand collapsed when China’s debt-fueled property bubble burst. The developer, real estate giant Evergrande, went bankrupt in 2024. Today, fewer than one in five apartments are occupied. Abandoned boats sit idle at the rundown pier, while “For Sale” signs and empty storefronts line the streets.
For Chen, though, it’s perfect. After three years of grinding through what she calls the “nine-to-six” schedule at her Shanghai firm, she began planning her escape. Her strategy was simple: save aggressively and find somewhere with rent so minimal she could live off investment returns indefinitely.
By accumulating 2 million yuan ($290,000) in savings and discovering “Life in Venice,” Chen made her dream a reality. She calculates the rent is low enough to sustain her for life without ever returning to work.
“I never believed that work is the meaning of life,” Chen said. “My ideal state of life is not to work and stay at places that I like.”
Chen’s old routine felt like “marching to my own death,” she said. Now she rises at 10 a.m., spending her days cooking, relaxing, and taking long beach walks. While the development lacks some big-city conveniences like her favorite sour soup hotpot restaurant or proximity to major hospitals, it offers enough basics: a grocery store, local eateries, and door-to-door delivery.
The exodus from China’s largest cities is becoming measurable. Between 2019 and 2024, Beijing alone lost 1.6 million residents in their twenties and early thirties, according to the capital’s statistics office. That’s roughly equal to the entire population of Philadelphia.
“People are quitting this competition, this very clear, linear, upward career track,” said Xiang Biao, director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany. “It’s a broader trend.”
The migration reflects deeper frustrations with China’s workplace culture. Most large companies, particularly high-paying tech firms, demand employees work 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Monday through Saturday. It is a punishing schedule known as “996 culture.”
Under this pressure, some young professionals have embraced “lying flat,” a resistance movement that rejects traditional career paths and capitalism in favor of a “low-desire life.”
Others are pursuing their own version of FIRE, “Financial Independence, Retire Early,” a concept popular among some Western young adults. In China, this lifestyle is more accessible because living costs in smaller cities can be remarkably low. At “Life in Venice,” housing prices have dropped by more than half since the market downturn, and a full lunch of noodles or rice costs under three dollars.
Twenty-nine-year-old Ban Zhao made a similar leap last summer, relocating from a busy commercial city on the east coast to a small town in southwestern Yunnan province. Nestled in a lush valley known for pristine air and natural hot springs, the town offered Ban a three-bedroom apartment for just 800 yuan monthly ($110). She converted one bedroom into a yoga studio.
Ban and her boyfriend now work fewer than 20 hours weekly, teaching yoga classes online to cover expenses. The rest of their time is spent wandering through tree-lined neighborhoods and soaking up the region’s abundant sunshine.
“I can do whatever I want and not do whatever I don’t want,” Ban said. “I live in heaven.”
Another destination drawing attention is Hegang, a frigid, remote coal mining city in northeastern China where housing has become astonishingly cheap. As resources depleted and mines closed, young residents departed, leaving far more homes than people. Apartments now cost less than cars.
Realtor Yang Xuewei has sold more than 100 bargain units to buyers across China and even some foreigners who discovered his virtual tours online. A one-bedroom apartment goes for around $3,000, while a spacious four-bedroom can be purchased for $13,000.
“I don’t know about big cities, I never lived in one,” Yang said. “I can only say that living in Hegang is easy.”
The economic backdrop makes these migrations increasingly logical. China’s economy expanded just 5% in 2025. It is still outpacing the U.S. and other developed nations, but nowhere near the double-digit growth rates of past decades. As the economy cools, employment opportunities have contracted. As of December, 16.5% of 16-to-24-year-olds not enrolled in school were unemployed.
Chen Zhiwu, a finance professor at the University of Hong Kong, sees the trend as a rational response to changing circumstances. Rising living costs and shrinking job prospects in major cities are pushing people toward more affordable locations.
“It’s natural,” Chen said. “Young people are facing reality and thinking hard about their futures.”
