Buddhist Temple Offers Sanctuary To The Elderly In Rural China (Photo : Getty Images)
China’s rapidly graying population is forcing the country to address issues related to aging, including the need for intimacy and how to stave off loneliness.
One solution is the creation of communities made up of retired zhiqing. The zhiqing used to be the educated youth during the term of Chairman Mao Ze Dong who were deployed to the countryside in the 1960s and 1970s, the height of the communist regime in China.
Most of them, during their youth, worked hard in the rural areas but are now retired and with adult children living their own lives in cities. Now with a lot of free time, some of these zhiqing held reunions where the idea to live together was born.
In Tianjin, 64-year-old Zhang Chengyong established the Happiness Home on a three-storey building, reported Global Times.
A similar home was established in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, made up of Lu Zhijun, her husband and 10 other retired people who used to be zhiqing in Jilin Province. Residents share the chores and they take turns cooking, cleaning and doing other tasks. A monthly contribution of 500 yuan ($76) is collected to cover their daily expenses.
Lu shared, “Our kids are scattered all over the place, some in Beijing, some in Shanghai, some living by themselves in Jilin, they don’t have time to take care of their parents. If these friends and I can live together, I think it’s quite nice.”
A report about 400 retiring zhiqing found that most of them did not finish high school when they were deployed to the rural areas. When the program was abolished eventually in the 1980s, most of them found blue-collar jobs and are now retired, but with small pensions which were tied to their salaries.
About 85 percent of zhiqing are very poor with very small pensions that they could barely make ends meet. The idea of living in zhiqing communities attract them because of the commonality of their experience in their youth and the challenge they face living alone in their sunset years.
In Fujian Province, the place’s elderly population are being taken care of at the Ji Xiang Temple, a Buddhist temple which has been serving since 2000 as a nursing home for homeless seniors, reported CBC.
