'The next chapter' Chinese expats find refuge, free speech and a slower pace of life in Thailand

Xiong Yidan has gathered more than a dozen animals since she moved to Thailand.

- Amy Hawkins

There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There are Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, Dumpling the hedgehog who enjoys a belly rub. The list goes on.

Xiong nurtures her brood at her 8,000-sq-metre farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand's Chiang Mai province. Xiong, in her mid-30s, has chronicled her journey from Beijing cryptocurrency marketing executive to farm girl in Thailand on social media; she's particularly popular on Xiaohongshu, a female-focused app similar to Instagram, where she has more than 38,000 followers. Her account shows people that switching to a slower pace of life "is not just some illusion or idealistic thing, but is very actionable", she says.

Moving to Thailand has allowed her to be a farmer, an influencer, a businesswoman and a single, child-free woman, away from the pressures of Chinese society.

Xiong is part of a growing trend of Chinese people - especially millennials who feel the country that was supposed to be the 21st-century powerhouse has little to offer them personally in social, intellectual and spiritual terms. In recent years, an economic downturn and lingering trauma from the isolation of China's draconian zero-Covid regime has pushed people who would otherwise be seen as the country's success stories to emigrate.