China’s Farm Getaways Close by the Tens of Thousands as Economy Slows

A traveler set out into the hills outside a Chinese city to find a farm restaurant, following mountain roads for more than 12 miles. Door after door was shut. When he finally found one still serving, his group had the entire courtyard to itself, he recounted in a post shared online. A decade earlier, the same trip would have required a reservation, and the cars would have been backed up to the village gate.

China’s farm getaways, whose name in Chinese means roughly “farmhouse fun,” at one time anchored a generation of weekend escapes from the city, but they are now closing nationwide. More than 84,000 had been struck from the business registry as of early 2024, the most recent national tally available, according to figures from the commercial database Qichacha reported by state broadcaster China National Radio.

Once celebrated as an affordable taste of country life, the business has lost both its customers and its reputation.

China affairs commentator Li Linyi told The Epoch Times the decline runs deeper than tired gimmicks. It reflects, he said, both an erosion of trust in what Chinese kitchens are serving and a slowing economy that has left ordinary people short of cash.

From Boom to Bust

Farm getaways began spreading in China in the 1980s. The formula was cheap and simple: Convert a farmhouse, set out some tables, and sell city dwellers a day in the countryside—fruit-picking, fishing, a wood-fired meal, and a clean room for the night. Most were about 20 to 30 miles from city centers, close enough for a same-day round trip. In the early years, owners guarded their reputations; the chicken was caught from the yard, the fish were killed to order and cooked in front of the guests.

Demand exploded. Registrations of farm-stay businesses jumped 492 percent between 2015 and 2019, according to Chinese media tallies, and by early 2024 the national total had climbed to roughly 200,000. On weekends and holidays, traffic clogged their gates, tables were scarce, and a two- or three-hour wait was routine.

Then the crowds vanished. Tang, who has run farm getaways in Qingyuan, Guangdong, for 13 years, told The Epoch Times she opened her first in 2013. Business was poor, so she sold off her earlier ventures one by one. She now runs her fourth, in a partnership. Staying afloat today, she said, means paying for online traffic and influencers.

Chinese business owners interviewed for this article requested anonymity or used only their surnames, citing fear of reprisal.

“I hired a team to do promotion, and I pay people to market on Douyin,” Tang said, referring to the Chinese version of TikTok. One round costs more than 10,000 yuan (about $1,400) for ordinary creators, she said, and a single video from a well-known influencer runs more than 17,000 yuan (about $2,400). “If you don’t do this, there’s no business to be had.”

Even that is not enough. “I have 11 employees, and we’ve lost money for months,” she said. “The only reason I’m holding on is that I’m in a partnership and don’t pay rent. Even without rent, we’re in the red.”

Others tell similar stories. One online account from Bobai County in Guangxi claimed 90 percent of the area’s farm getaways were losing money, with most lasting only two years.

In April, the owner of a mountain villa in Loudi, Hunan, posted a video describing his daily losses: He had sunk more than 3 million yuan (about $420,000) into the place, his costs ran about 3,500 yuan (about $500) a day, and by midafternoon not a single room had a guest. When the villa opened a few years earlier, he said, cars had lined up out front.

In February, a woman in Xuzhou posted a video saying she had inherited a getaway her aunt built for more than 20 million yuan (about $2.8 million)—and that the day’s takings came to just 1,000 yuan (about $140). 

A Fake Taste of the Country

Online, much of the blame falls on sameness. Once the model caught on, villages filled with near-identical operations—some with five or six in a single village—serving the same firewood chicken, farm eggs, and cured-pork rice, and offering the same day out: strawberry-picking in the morning, fishing in the afternoon, karaoke at night.

The old draw—a farm courtyard, a mahjong table, a fishing pond—has gone stale, critics say. In a survey by the state-run outlet Guangming Net, 57.72 percent of visitors said the getaways offered little to do, and 60 percent dismissed what they called a “fake farm experience.”

The critique of the food has been worse, with the “pristine, natural” appeal that once defined these places, in many cases, now accused of becoming the biggest lie. Menus advertise free-range native chicken but serve frozen drumsticks; “freshly picked” vegetables are bought wholesale at the market; the “wood-fire rice” is often cooked on bottled gas. Owners chasing quick money have gained a reputation for gouging, and for uneven cooking that left diners fuming.

Tang acknowledged that some operators do pass off wholesale chicken as farm-raised. “If it’s cheap, it can’t be quality; if it’s quality, it can’t be cheap,” she said. “That’s just how this business works.” The real shift, she added, is in the customer. “Don’t expect to make much now,” she said. “You have to give generous portions at fair prices.”

Food Safety Issues

Food safety has been a recurring wound. On June 12, the Shanghai-based state-run outlet The Paper reported that a high-potency groundbait—dropped into the water to make fish “bite like crazy”—was selling briskly among anglers. Its secret ingredient, The Paper’s investigative team found, was diazepam, a tightly controlled sedative sold as Valium that China classifies as a Class II psychotropic and bans from aquaculture.

On several e-commerce platforms, packages openly bore the label “diazepam” or “DXP,” and some had sold in the tens of thousands. Lab tests on samples came back positive for the drug, which Chinese rules forbid from being detected in any meat. As the report noted, the fish served at a farm getaway may well be contaminated.

The report drew a swift response. The same day, market regulators in Jianyang, Sichuan, said they had sealed an implicated workshop and placed its operator under criminal detention, according to an official notice.

Li said the problem runs through China’s food supply. Heavy use of chemicals in farming has left toxic residues everywhere, he said, while a broader decline in ethics has made cutting corners routine—part of why fraud-prone businesses such as farm getaways have soured.

When the Money Dried Up

But the deeper cause of the collapse, Li said, is economic: years of slowing growth, downgraded spending, and empty wallets.

Tang put it plainly. People’s habits have changed, she said. “In the past, an official from the public security bureau would put down 5,000 yuan and spend 4,000 in a single visit,” she said. “Now they want everything itemized, and 5,000 yuan lasts months. Nobody drops 4,000 at once anymore.”

She blamed a mix of forces: a lack of money, a weak economy, and high unemployment.

The pandemic played an unexpected role in her account. Strict lockdowns from late 2019 hurt the business, but Tang said business during the pandemic itself was passable; the real slide began after the controls lifted. Three years of lockdowns gave way to a sustained downturn and weak domestic demand—now a widely acknowledged feature of China’s economy.

Even now, the churn has not stopped.

Huang, a man in his 30s from Zunyi, Guizhou, told The Epoch Times he is more than a month into converting his family house into a farm getaway, the work still unfinished. He left Fortune 500 jobs in Shenzhen and Beijing, worn out by the grind, and decided to try the countryside instead.

He has no illusions about what he is walking into. The town’s earlier farm getaways have all closed, he said, and he believes the figure of 80,000-plus shutdowns is only a glimpse of a wider slump.

“Clothing stores, brick-and-mortar shops—even more have closed,” he said. “It’s just that the data isn’t public.”

Tang Bing and Gu Xiaohua contributed to this report.