Dali
City in Yunnan, China.
At a glance
| Source | Author | Role | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Breakneck | Dan Wang | setting | They live among the Bai people with lakeside white-walled houses. |
| Breakneck | Dan Wang | turning point | After graduating, Wang’s parents were sent to Dali as middle school teachers in a corps of three dozen youths, became a couple and married there, handing guests milk candy. |
Breakneck — Dan Wang (2025)
Source: Readwise highlight
Silvia and I spent several months in the city of Dali, which has a lake on one side and a mountain range on the other.
- Role: setting
- In the book: They live among the Bai people with lakeside white-walled houses. Dali, nicknamed Dalifornia, draws organic farmers, parents seeking nature education, foreigners running bakeries and techno clubs, and a crypto community. Silvia does fieldwork while he works remotely.
- Why it matters: It is the author’s refuge and the place where he sees the ‘rùn’ type of young people who later appear in Chiang Mai.
Breakneck — Dan Wang (2025)
Source: Breakneck · Readwise highlight
The state dispatched the two of them to the Yunnan city of Dali—which also happens to be where Silvia and I fled in 2022 to escape the Covid lockdowns.
- Role: turning point
- In the book: After graduating, Wang’s parents were sent to Dali as middle school teachers in a corps of three dozen youths, became a couple and married there, handing guests milk candy. Decades later Wang fled to the same city to escape Covid lockdowns.
- Why it matters: It links the parents’ youth to the author’s own flight, a quiet echo within the family story, though the text spends little time describing Dali itself.