Not long ago, a verdict was handed down in the Jingbian Abandonment of the Elderly case, and the son who tried to bury his mother alive was sentenced to twelve years. Also not long ago, because the hospital cancelled on-site registration, elderly people who could not use QR codes to make appointments shouted that they could not turn us away. Two events, together, brought the heavy topic of old age back to our attention
The essence of these two things is the same: abandonment of the elderly. China is a society that traditionally respects the elderly, and that is why these two events have caused a great shock to the whole society. However, respecting the elderly and abandoning the elderly are really two sides of the story in contemporary China. On one side is the Chinese tradition of respecting the elderly, policies, public opinion, morality, and resources are all tilted towards the elderly by default. On the other side is the reality of economic pressure and social changes, where the elderly inevitably face the fear of being abandoned by the times. The political correctness of the former cannot disguise the actual existence of the latter.
The elderly who were almost buried alive in Jingbian and those who are unrecognizable in the city represent two major categories of contemporary Chinese elderly people. The difference between the two is clear: the former can only rely on their children after losing their jobs, while the latter have a stable retirement income and social security. In contrast to the former’s hardships, the latter enjoys the benefits of China’s development. But before the tide of time, they were just as old and vulnerable, facing the worry of being abandoned.
The abandonment of the elderly in Jingbian is an extreme case of an old woman who abandoned her family when she was young and then met a son who went to extremes with resentment in his old age. But the lives of the elderly in the countryside are far from idyllic. Their main income, usually a couple of hundred yuan per month after semi-compulsory supplemental social security payments at the minimum standard, is their main source of income. For many people, this may be the cost of a meal, but in the countryside there are elderly people who have to walk twelve kilometers on crutches to the town’s credit union every month to collect a hundred dollars or so that comes in regularly, even if they have difficulty walking. Most of the rural elderly have no trust in the public sector and rely on their children as the norm. Abandonment of the elderly is much more widespread in urban and rural China today than most people think.
Extreme cases like the one in Jingbian are of course rare. But in rural areas, it is not uncommon for children to refuse to fulfill their support obligations and for multiple children to blame each other. In my grass-roots experience, encountering a son’s filial piety is an almost completely unsolved problem. In rural areas, old age is both a reality of economic pressure and a dilemma of contemporary family life. The traditional extended family disintegrates, and even in rural areas, the new families formed by the elderly and their children may not get along very well. For the rural elderly, illness not only means a long illness, but also a lower standard of living and medical care, and a more fragile economic condition. For many elderly people, going to the hospital after a serious illness is just a last resort, while many others choose to finish their final journey at home.
In fact, a large number of elderly people in rural areas are disappearing with the gradual hollowing out of the countryside, which is not a form of abandonment. In many cases, it is only on the day the elderly die that you realize there are still so many people in the family. And after the old man is gone, the house, new or old, is completely silent.
In contrast, those elderly people who have been fed in the public sector are happy. They have stable pensions, and increasingly better social security. But they also face the same pressures that all elderly people face. The pace of society, which is moving so fast and changing so drastically, makes the elderly increasingly overwhelmed.
Naturally, we sympathize with the elderly who are not registered, but from another perspective, is it easy for young people to go to a doctor? Today’s young people can’t afford to spend a day at the doctor’s office after working overtime. In fact, many of today’s young people really can’t compete with the elderly in terms of medical resources. Whoever has not encountered a group of elderly people in front of them in the queue has less time to wait than the elderly.
The elderly are bewildered by unfamiliar technology, but what hospital with good doctors isn’t a green corridor for the rich and the free to see an elderly person with a chronic illness, so where does the number come from? And how many young people today are not as healthy as their parents? Our society’s resources are chronically strained, everything needs to be fiercely competitive, and competition between the young and the old is emerging. Are they helplessly abandoned or are they leaning on the moral high ground?
At the same time, the empty nesters we see everywhere in today’s cities are also experiencing a kind of abandonment. Even if the elderly live with their children, they have less and less common topics to talk about. How much interaction is there between the elderly who are busy with household chores and the children who come home after a day’s work and close the door after dinner to play with their cell phones? Sickness and loneliness, as well as the powerlessness of aging, which is both physical and spiritual, cannot be solved by limited pensions and social security.
Even if we take a step backwards and really unite the whole society and try to build a greenhouse of happiness for the elderly, will they be free of worries? People do not live in a vacuum. Older people struggle to adapt to these unfamiliar times, and often continue to share the burdens of their children, which is what we are familiar with. This is what we are familiar with. In modern times, it is a common phenomenon. A house that empties six wallets over three generations is now a matter of course. It’s also a great place to start, but it’s also a great place to start. In modern times, it is also a widespread and discouraging situation that wages are less than pensions, due to huge financial transfers and steady pension increases.
Few people in contemporary China, which is aging and having fewer children, have enough confidence in its inherently inadequate social security system. People are betting more on the eventual bottoming out of the country’s continued development. In the midst of this heavy shadow, young people’s feelings toward the elderly are becoming more complicated.
In the increasingly developed market economy, on the one hand, there is more affluence and convenience, and on the other hand, many people are under more pressure than their parents, and have to pedal with all their might to keep themselves afloat. The crisis of obsolescence begins at the age of thirty-five, and many people, under the pressure of life, do not have the luxury of retiring at sixty-five.
The irony of the famous Japanese movie Narayama is that under the pressure of reality, many of today’s young people do not mind throwing themselves into the basket of abandonment, not getting married, not socializing, and walking alone to the end of their lives. Capital, on the other hand, grabs them mercilessly out of the basket and asks them to keep working and create more leeks.
The Chinese have an old saying, “Yin Jian is not far away. It is hard to imagine today that one of the main reasons for the victory of the Western Zhou Dynasty was that it was good at retirement, so the wise men of the four directions were willing to join it. At that time, the good care of the elderly was a sign of a developed civilization, and only in an affluent and civilized society could the elderly be treated well, which was the best proof of the power of the Zhou people.
Three thousand years after the Shang and Zhou revolutions, the topic of old age still deserves our deep thoughts. Old people deserve respect, while young people create the future and deserve a happy old age after a lifetime of hard work. But greedy capital can squeeze people to the point where there is no room for man, mercilessly discarding all the laggards, even suppressing human instincts and alienating human relationships. In such a harsh society, both the old and the young, no matter how much warmth they wear, are unhappy.
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