Zhejiang looks after lonely elders
(China Daily)
Updated: 2005-02-01 06:12

HANGZHOU: Mao Panzhong, a 73-year-old single farmer in East China's Zhejiang Province, never thought his meals would be prepared for him and his clothes washed by others.

But this is the life he leads now.

Together with 49 other seniors, Mao lives a happy life in a retirement home in the Daqiao Township in Jiangshan, having said goodbye to his former ragged and solitary life.

Apartment rooms

Neat and spacious, the apartment rooms where the residents live all have TVs. Some residents sit out on the lawns, which surround the building, enjoying the warm sunshine in the winter or listening to the radio. Others exercise.

Like Daqiao, other towns in Jiangshan have also built retirement homes in order to ensure happy, golden years for those rural elders.

Statistics from the provincial government show about 80 per cent of all former solitary elders in urban and rural areas of the province have already been accommodated in an old persons' home, thanks to local government efforts.

Economically developed, Zhejiang Province was the first to widely adopt this way of providing for the aged and lonely. The programme is funded mainly by local governments.

This is also part of a plan initiated in 2003, in which the central government said it would "provide for those elders with no spouse or children."

In October last year, the State Council issued a document to order local governments to make more efforts to ensure a better life for solitary seniors in urban or rural areas.

"As a pilot city under the plan, Jiangshan has made great progress in providing for them," said Mao Jianhua, a senior official in the city. "Of the 2,035 solitary elders, 1,644 are living in old people's homes."

Mao added that the people are also incorporated into the rural medical security system and do not have to worry about the costs of seeing doctors.

Wang Shanhong, 70, is also a farmer living alone in Jiangshan. "To my delight, the others here even held a party to celebrate my 70th birthday on the eve of the New Year," Wan said.

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