Aging in Ban Zhu Cun

I waited for my morning water to boil and could hear far below some high-pitched meowing from a tinny radio. It’s a common sound here in my residential village, Ban Zhu Cun, which is full of small gray-haired people strolling around the public areas, clutching cheap radios that blare old songs at a high volume, songs that to my untrained Western ears sound like cats whining. But, even if I don’t particularly like these headache-inducing songs, I like the way old people age in Ban Zhu Cun.

My apartment village is right across the street from Gate Six of Southwest University in a “small” Chinese city of half a million—and may be a remnant of the “iron rice bowl,” the state provided social welfare system. Today, China has privatized most of its previously state-owned businesses and collectives, which is no doubt a good thing, but in doing so it also has gotten rid of the “iron rice bowl” providing health care and retirement benefits to most of the population. An exception, as far as I know, is the university system and housing like mine here in Ban Zhu Cun. Professors not only have housing provided for them, but they can live on in their homes long after retirement. Aged scholars shuffle around campus as well as here in Ban Zhu Cun, a collection of maybe fifty or so multi-story apartment buildings nestled at the foot of a small mountain. As far as I can tell, retired faculty outnumber younger ones because younger faculty tend to sublease their apartments here and live elsewhere in more upscale housing. I don’t know who all of the people are living all around me, but many of them are old.

But if I’m living in what is becoming a defacto retirement community, it differs from most Western retirement communities in some significant ways, ways that I hope aren’t lost in the rapidly changing Chinese urban landscape: It is not entirely isolated; it is not separate. Not only do I hope that China keeps some of its collectivist tendency to integrate populations, to maintain dynamic community, but I also hope that the West might learn a thing or two from China. If nothing else, the West might notice, as China is noticing, that an aging population is right up there with climate change as a critical issue in the twenty-first century.

I don’t have a brain big enough to fathom how to solve the real problems with an aging global population, and China certainly doesn’t have all the answers. The one-child policy may have curtailed population growth, but it has also created the 1-2-4 situation, where every child today will be responsible for caring for two parents and four grandparents, all of whom are living longer lives, few of whom have any kind of significant health or retirement benefits. The burden on youth is staggering.

With more people living beyond productive working years, China can count on a labor shortage in the not too distant future, with huge economic consequences. The burden on the family unit to be the safety network is fraying as men and women join the labor force and move to distant cities. Lots of young women are conflicted between traditional Confucian ideals and contemporary feminist beliefs. I see nothing like ADA standards here, and I pity anyone caring for a loved one needing a wheelchair or other special services, especially in a mountain city like Beibei. How does a country care for what will soon be hundreds of millions of people who are "getting old before they are rich,” before the government has smoothed out new kinds of pension plans? The challenges confronting China’s middle-aged and young adults to care for their elders are simply mind-bending. So, again, I'm not pretending that China has all the answers.

Still, I see people puttering around Ban Zhu Cun without being cut off from the world at large. In the park-like public area way below my apartment, disciplined elders sweep their arms gracefully through taijiquan moves in the morning and trot to waltzes and other dances at night. Grandparents walk slowly hand-in-hand with pre-schoolers, not rushing. Again, grandparents walk. Children walk. They walk! They smell the roses! Each child is handled, steadily, constantly.  They walk because there are places you can walk to—vegetable vendors, little shops, schools. These places are all laced throughout the community. In fact, on a summer night, Ban Zhu Cun might look like a small county fair with hawkers here and vendors there and public performances—and the sounds of music and humanity filling the evening skies. There are few walls between public and private, between elder and junior, between inside and outside. Life moves fluidly and therefore somewhat purposefully back and forth. A much older citizen might hobble around, their grandchildren grown and off to college, and still have much young life to observe. Dogs run freely everywhere. The area is teeming with life, and the aged are not cut off from it.

To maintain some of this quality of life, certain collectivist values need to be maintained on maybe a village-like scale. People need to be able to walk around without having to go great distances to meet simple needs. Towns need to be laid out so that homes, school, shops are still village-like, close together. Lots of green spaces and public gathering places need to be laced through residential areas. Older people need to be able to witness, if not actively participate in, community life. Physical activity needs to be a natural byproduct of simply getting through the day. People need to be bathed in community and social discourse. The aged need to be dynamically integrated as much as possible. . . to be a part of, not apart from community life.

How to maintain what I see in Ban Zhu Cun in a rapidly changing China, I don’t know. I’m not an economist. I’m not a city planner. I’m not a social worker. But I think the first thing might be continuing to cherish the common good—and maintaining a context where that value can be realized, village-like communities. If I were 95, I think I’d like puttering around Ban Zhu Cun, listening to my tinny radio.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-hodin/post_6495_b_4483135.html

http://www.economist.com/node/13888069

http://thediplomat.com/2013/11/population-aging-in-china-a-mixed-blessing/