Believe It or Not, Beijing Is a Fine City for Digital Nomads

We humans have come a long way from our nomadic days, wandering the plains in pursuit of wild animals without any land to call our own. And yet, a decamillennium later, the combination of global transit and hyperspeed communication technology has given rise to a new kind of nomad: the digital nomad.

This specimen of working traveler can often be found dwelling, at least for a time, in the metropolises of the globe – including Beijing. That’s especially the case if we consider the definition of digital nomad to include those of us who regularly alternate between cities, as well as those who root their main work in the capital without rooting their feet here, leaving themselves to roam the country (or, when COVID is over, the world) at any time they please.

Nearly all of my adult life, I’ve fit somewhere within this definition, and being in and around Beijing for about the past 5 years, learning from and experiencing all the city has to offer, I’ve nonetheless been able to stay mobile while making Beijing a home base of sorts.

I reached out to some other part-time Beijingers who embrace the digital nomad lifestyle and found that I’m not alone in thinking that it has its advantages. Caiwei Chen, a journalist, writer, consultant (multiple job titles are common among the nomadic) who is originally from Hubei. For the past 6 years she has been back and forth between Beijing and the US. She told me, that the upside of the lifestyle, is that she can always manage to keep the company of others working in creative industries – one advantage of keeping a home base like Beijing.

“I can still always meet many interesting people,” she tells me. “And even though most of my work can be done from my couch, or the many different cool coffee shops in the area, if I choose to go out, I still have offline activities and cultural scenes available to me.”

In my own coffee shop life and workstyle, I often think that people might even mistake me for a vagabond when they see me in a coffee shop with 2 bags and my yoga mat. Some may call it overpacking, while I look at it as being prepared. I often laugh at myself when I travel and realize that I sometimes carry just about as much daily supplies that I bring with me for short international trips, or lately just visiting different cities in China. If I only have one bag with me, it is usually my briefcase, which is really my mobile office; with computer, calendar, notebook, and a book or magazine. My second bag is usually my gym bag, which will substitute as a small travel bag if I’m on the road, in the sky, or on a train. I try to keep my gym bag with me often, because I have a much higher chance of going to the gym if I have my gym stuff with me; and if I am going to be teaching yoga, I also need my mat.

Though others may not be toting as many bags around as me, the nomadic lifestyle is becoming a trend in many waysIt goes by other names as well: Full-timing, Global nomad, Teleworking, and Outworking. CGTN even aired a segment that talked about different types of Digital Nomads and their lifestyles, suggesting that China is no exception to this global trend.

Given that it’s such a loose term, though, many Beijingers, particularly foreigners who, by their nature tend to have at least somewhat of a traveling bone in their body, often end up riding the line between full-timer and digital nomad with a Beijing base. Take for example Elaine Zhou, who I originally at the US Embassy in Beijing – She’s from Chicago and has only been in China for 6 months, and she says she doesn’t consider herself a digital nomad just yet, but in less than a week of knowing her, she had already been in a handful of hostels meeting different people, been couch surfing in Beijing, Hebei, and Qingdao, and even made a few other day trips to other cities in between.

“I’m a teacher just enjoying summer pay right now which lets me do this long trip. So, I’ve still got my stable job in Shanghai and just came to Beijing for part of my summer wandering trip.” But it’s just that kind of wandering that gives birth to a nomadic curiosity. “I’m hoping, after 2 years in China,” she tells me, “to live in a different place or country, and change places every few years. I want to live like a local with as many cultures as possible.”

Globally the pandemic paused some of the core dynamics of the nomadic lifestyle, and might have kept some people put in one place for longer than usual, but it also opened up many people’s eyes to the fact that work could be done remotely and that the location of where we work might not necessarily need to be in the office every day.

Here in Beijing, the ease of being a Digital Nomad rated about average according to NomadList.com, earning a score of of 3.1/5 – and though I personally find that to be an underrating, I can understand that some prefer to depart from a hectic urban lifestyle if they can. Nonetheless, the opportunities that a city like Beijing affords its comers makes it an ideal starter for a nomad.

Drew Pittock, a freelance writer from California who found himself feeling at home in Beijing’s music scene, might agree. When I spoke with him about turning the freelance freedom he found in Beijing into a true digital nomad lifestyle, he mentioned that he and his partner have been planning to make Estonia their next home base. That country, he tells me, is one of a few but growing number of countries that offer visas for digital nomads who can prove that they can earn income from their remote work.

“That played a part in our choosing to go. The other part is that visited Tallinn in 2019 and absolutely loved it. It’s a super small, charming, quaint, and quiet city that will be a nice respite after three years in Beijing.”

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