Gao Huanying’s ideal Life in her old age: sauna, moxibustion, and off-site wellness vacations.
Gao Huanying, Gao Huanying’s older sister, younger sister, and elderly mother paid a total of 450,000 for this dream.
In the summer of 2020, a number of nursing homes in Yiyang thundered, turning the life savings of more than 6,000 elderly people into bubbles.
The old man who wove the cooler, the old man who was a cleaner, the old man who was a senior physics teacher for 30 years, the old man whose wife was in the intensive care unit, the old man with Alzheimer’s disease …… their money and their old age, were taken away.
A “cold in the river, to fish him up”
Hunan Yiyang, 11:00 a.m., Zhang Zhicheng took a drum and hurried to the river. He heard that an old man jumped from a bridge on the Zijang River, the body has not been found. It was winter, the riverside water fog, buildings and trees are hidden. Zhang Zhicheng stood on the gravel beach, “dong dong dong dong” drumming, a knock is four or five hours. The drums are noisy, monotonous and continuous, and they go far into the distance. In Hunan, drumming is a ritual to invoke the souls of the dead.
It was January 21. The sound of the drums attracted more and more people to stop by. Someone asked Zhang Zhicheng, “Why are you beating the drums? “
Zhang Zhicheng said, “The river is cold, to fish him out. “
Zhang Zhicheng drumming video was then passed on the Internet by the blogger “Liu Yimu”. People soon learned that the old man who committed suicide was named Cao Yinglin, 62, who had no formal job before he died, and invested 170,000 yuan of his savings in the “Nano Nursing Home” after a thunderstorm. On January 23, four days after Cao Yinglin jumped into the river, divers finally found him in a reef at the bottom of the river. When the body was recovered, Cao Yinglin was naked and white, with his hands clasped together, as if he was still in the same position as when he jumped into the river.
Reporters flocked to this small third-tier town. People were even more surprised to find that Cao Yinglin was not alone. According to Liu Yimu and Tang Chao, rights volunteers who have been following up on the nursing home thunderstorm, at least 6,000 elderly people were caught in the predicament after the thunderstorm of scheduled nursing home bed services. 67-year-old Liu, who had invested 70,000, reassured himself after learning that the nursing home’s owner had turned himself in, “Now it’s ‘nothing can be done about it’, what can be done about it? “Wang Yu divorced, his sister-in-law pulled her along with her to invest in the Heng Fu Hai nursing home on the grounds that she had no one to rely on, 50,000 each. After the storm, Wang Yu could not sleep all night long, and now works as a cleaner in Guangzhou, relying on a monthly salary of 2,000 yuan to make ends meet. And 71-year-old Li Youcai died suddenly in the bathroom after learning that the 30,000 scheduled pension service she had paid would never come back. When cleaning up her belongings, her son realized that only $17.77 was left in her bankbook.
Jiang Jianguo, 82, will have the decency to bring five red leather certificates before recounting the nursing home thunderstorm, one by one, to tell you about his award-winning experience. As a senior physics teacher for 30 years, he rightfully believes he has made some contribution to China’s Education. But that didn’t stop the money from disappearing again and again – in 2015, he was persuaded by his daughter to put $120,000 into a P2P financial project, which then crashed. Two years later, he again put 50,000 into the Heng Fu Hai nursing home to reserve a bed, hoping to live out his life in two years. Until this last savings also disappeared.
Some old people knelt down toward the owner of the Taojiang County Duhao Nursing Home and begged him, saying that his husband was suffering from cancer and could he get back the 200,000 he had invested. Some old people simply slept on the floor of the lobby of the Rouge Lake nursing home, scolding the boss that you are a dog man who owes us hundreds of thousands of dollars and just won’t pay. One elderly widow without children or husband wanted to get back her operation money, and fought with the owner of Hengfuhai Nursing Home, but her hand was cut by the owner’s nails and bled.
Gao Huanying, 68, never thought that Internet words like “thunderstorm” would be associated with her. She laughed shyly, “I’ve rarely heard this (word) before. Her understanding of the word “thunderstorm” is that “they are paralyzed The kind of the “mines”, not able to cash, the money can not get back, and the fact is completely different! “
First her eldest sister invested 50,000, followed by her 89-year-old mother, then her, then her little sister, the Family invested a total of 450,000 into it. The old mother could not afford to eat or wear, and often went to the market to collect vegetables to eat. Later, her younger brother and sister asked Gao Huanying to keep the 80,000 yuan her mother had saved, so she took it and booked a bed in the Hengfuhai nursing home. She described herself as “soul-less” after learning that the owner of the nursing home had turned himself in last August, and now she is Now she is “surrounded by enemies on all sides”.
Her mother sits at home crying every day. Six months later, Gao Huanying’s mother began to show signs of dementia, unable to move freely, sitting in a chair every day with a sunken face, bowed back, and needing help to get up. Hearing Gao Huanying talk about the process of investing in a nursing home, her mother interjected from Time to time, “I really can’t figure it out! Gao Huanying told her not to talk, but then her mother said to herself, “What’s going on here? “
Liu Chaohua did not dare to tell her mother the news of the nursing home thunderstorm. Last summer, the aunt called her to say that the lightning storm. Her mother has coronary heart disease, she was afraid that her mother would not accept the news after knowing. A while ago, her mother had a dream that the nursing home was yellow and she rushed to get the money out. Liu Chaohua also lied to her mother and said, there is no matter, you do not worry.
This nursing home bed reservation fiasco has even reached the most end of the rural areas. Ding Lihua of Zengjiaping village in Taojiang County took out all the 50,000 hidden in a drawer and invested it in the Taojiang Duhao Nursing Home. This is her entire savings that she saved by stringing bamboo mats (she can only make one one-and-a-half meter mat a day, earning ten yuan), working as a nanny, and working as a temporary sanitation worker. After learning that the money could not be taken out, she was so angry that her hemangioma ruptured and collapsed at home, “I don’t know anything anymore, just like dead. “
Fortunately, Ding Lihua was rescued. Now, she sits in a brick house full of old bamboo and extra construction planks her husband brought back from the city. Because of the guests, she was able to burn an iron pot to warm the fire, the dim light, the old bamboo Bi Bi peeled off to explode.
She said sadly that some village people laughed at her, saying that she was a rural person who still voted for the nursing home, and she did not have much money, “the countryside is not like in the city, understand? “
Two bait
According to Liu Yimu’s statistics, Yiyang City, the thunderstorm of nursing homes have been at least fifteen: Sunset Red, Nano, Rouge Lake, Court Lao, Yi Xin Yuan, Yi He Shou Kang, Xin Yi, Hengtai, Wan Ming Shan, Chong Yang, Heng Fu Hai, Duhao, Zi Wei, Ci Xiao, Wang Shou …… nursing homes are located in and around the urban areas of Yiyang City, some are very far from the city, such as NANO, which is more than thirty kilometers away from the city center, and the nearby Hengfuhai Senior Service Center, which is just less than two kilometers away from Yiyang Station.
For a long time, the nursing home salesmen ambush in the park, vegetable market, senior college, friends of the party, first send leaflets, then telephone bombardment, door-to-door, sweetly called uncle and aunt, help the elderly than their own children. It does not matter if the elderly are suspicious for a while, as long as they leave a phone, WeChat, they can be firmly in their hands through the cell phone.
Immediately after, the salesmen invited the elderly to do activities in the nursing home, sending a dozen eggs, two pounds of noodles, a box of moon cakes, a ten-dollar meal voucher. Some higher-end baits are: a trip to the former residence of Tian Han in Changsha and a trip to Thailand.
The nursing home is always a hot and lively place. At a final art performance at Hengfuhai Nursing Home, two hosts invited the elderly to “open your heart, release your passion, and let the happiness ring out! “. Afterwards, they introduced the guest line-up of the party – “Vice President of Hunan Radio and Television University “, “Director of Yiyang Civil Affairs Bureau”, “Director of “chairman of the city’s Golden Sun Commercial Trade Center and principal of Hengfuhai School” …… The elderly were coaxed into a daze. Not to mention, the documents of the nursing home have one “red poop” (the official seal stamped by the local government department) after another, and the wall is written How can this be a scam?
This is more like a sale of the imagination of a “good old age”. Gao Huanying took out the contract signed between Hengfuhai Nursing Home and her mother, which reads: “Pay 50,000 RMB today for the “Supreme Card”, and the balance of the card will increase by 4,500 RMB every year. 4500 Yuan. This part of the increase in “benefits” is in the card and can only be spent when the mother moves in. This is somewhat similar to the barbershop’s stored value model, except that the amount is larger, ranging from $10,000 to $1 million. The more money you pay, the bigger the discount. If the elderly choose not to stay in the nursing home, the benefits and the principal will be refunded together.
Gao Huanying’s ideal old age would look like this.
“Party A provides ballroom, chess room, gym, health room. “
“Four seasons health banquet, health Medicine, health tea, buffet. “
“Chinese medicine massage, foot care, acupuncture, moxibustion, fire cupping, sauna, etc. “
“Short day trips (around Yiyang), off-site wellness vacations (summer north and winter south). “
“Haircut, pedicure, ear-pulling, one-on-one escorted tours, shopping on behalf of others, laundry, car rental. “
Of course, any of these services need to be “charged according to the actual situation”. Another phrase that prompted Gao Huanying to pay quickly was: “If there is a conflict in staying, the order of staying will be according to the order of signing the contract, and if someone requests to stay at the same time, the one with more balance in the spending card will be given priority. She is worried that everyone is now grabbing, and in the future, she will “not be able to grab a bed in the nursing home The first thing she did was to search the internet for “member retirement home”.
The company is a member of the “member retirement thunderstorm”, will find that this is not an emerging model of retirement. 2014, Beijing In 2014, Beijing’s “Yi Yang Ai Evening” pension base was exposed to a broken capital chain. 2016, Changsha, a number of nursing homes involved in the amount of more than 100 million non-sucking lightning incident. 2019, Shanghai In 2019, the “Great Love City” nursing home thunderstorm. A Ms. Lu, who used to live in the “Love Heart” nursing home in Changsha, said in an interview that after she lived there, she realized that the people who came to visit were gone and the whole apartment was quiet. The floor was sometimes not mopped, the bathroom toilet paper was not changed, and the canteen bowls were being washed by the elderly themselves. When the news of the thunderstorm spread, everyone was driven away. Ms. Lu then realized that they were just “trustees” hired by the nursing home, and that the quality elderly services they had previously enjoyed were just The “illusion”.
But these news will not reach the hands of the elderly who cannot play with smartphones. It will be 2020 when this pension model is extended to third and fourth-tier cities and even more remote rural areas.
In Taojiang County, Ding Lihua only uses a senior citizen’s phone. At first, she was led to visit the nursing home by her best friend from the same village. The day of the storm, she also received a phone call from a good friend – a good friend said that she learned that someone’s contract expired but could not receive back the principal, she immediately put in the “file bag She left home with the contract in her “file folder. It was February 2020, when the Epidemic was in full swing, and it was cold, raining and the roads were muddy. But Ding Lihua couldn’t care less, she walked half an hour up the mountain, and transferred to bus number 7 to the office of Taojiang Duhao Nursing Home. But the boss was indifferent, saying that the money just couldn’t be issued.
The elderly people began to organize themselves to defend their rights. In a “Yiyang pension fraud recovery care center”, the group members have reached the upper limit of 500 people. The group owner Liu Yimu – also known as the blogger “Liu Yimu” mother Wang Ying, also had put 200,000 She has a heart condition, so she entrusted her son to return to the nursing home. She has a heart condition, so she entrusted her son to go back home to defend his rights.
Wang Ying said, before someone set up a committee, everyone in the group must register, pay 50 yuan to defend their rights. Many elderly people think that if they pay 50 yuan, they will immediately get money the next day. An old man who was too poor to afford a taxi walked more than ten kilometers to Yiyang to pay the fee, people did not want their money, he also made sure that the other party took it, this is his hope; an old lady who could not read and write cried many times in the group. Later the committee looked at her pity and wanted to return 50 yuan to her. The old lady refused to accept it, thinking that if she did, she would not get her money back.
However, the progress of the rights defense is still slow. If not for Cao Yinglin’s death, perhaps this thunderstorm in Yiyang would have been as silent as the thunderstorms in nursing homes in several other cities. One elderly man said that if Cao’s death could help everyone get their money back, they really thanked him, “but if it doesn’t, he really died in vain. “
Three “really scared”
Some elderly people admit that they invest in nursing homes for the “benefits” promised on the contract – 18 percent The return of 12%, 10% always sounds more attractive than the bank deposit interest. But more seniors are literally running for a nursing home bed. Gao Huanying said, after the Hengfuhai nursing home thunderstorm was filed, the police came to the victims to investigate. The survey form says “investor”, but she disagrees that she is an investor. “We are clearly here to reserve a bed”. She asked to change the title, which was not agreed to at first.
Later, the form was printed by the disgruntled victim with the phrase: “Register of victimized investors”, aimed at well-informed young people with brains, while we, the 2,000 old people, how can we invest our pensions when we don’t even feel safe to put them in the bank?
The older we get, the closer the endgame of death gradually approaches. The elderly secretly plan their last stop for themselves, and many conceal their friends, children and even partners when they sign up for a nursing home. The elderly Zhan Hehua said it is impossible to rely on their children for their old age, “There is no need to tell them, wouldn’t it be better to pay out of their own pockets and make their own arrangements for their old age, hopefully without adding to their burden? “
Gao Huanying did not dare to tell her son when she saved the money to the nursing home, for fear that her son and daughter-in-law would have thoughts that the money would not be given to them. She seldom discussed with her son about retirement. Until after the nursing home thunderstorm, she went to defend her rights. When her son found out, he complained why she went to do such a thing, why she kept it hidden from them and did not trust them. “Sometimes I could only go behind their backs and shed tears by myself in secret. It turns out that I wanted to make my own arrangements and preparations earlier, but I didn’t expect such a downfall. “
She had no way to tell her son about her deeper fears and insecurities. Now, Gao Huanying lives in her son’s house and brings her granddaughter to him. Her son’s daughter and granddaughter sleep in the master bedroom, she and her partner sleep in the second bedroom, and her 89-year-old mother sleeps in the smallest room. Her mother’s bedroom has a plastic portable toilet, which she bought just a while ago on a bargain. She cleans the toilet and sprays it with disinfectant every day. Now she needs to take off her pants and wipe her buttocks when she goes to the toilet. Mom can’t tell the difference between poop and pee anymore, sometimes she thinks it’s pee after pooping and pulls up her pants in a hurry, so the poop gets everywhere.
She occasionally can’t help but be mean to her mom, “Just say the word if you poop! “But mom still can’t figure it out. Now every night at 2 a.m., she has to call her mother to get up to go to the toilet regularly for fear that she will poop in bed.
Gao Huanying is wearing a pair of thick-framed glasses, an earthy yellow jacket and black workout pants, which she says with a smile are her “work clothes” as she prepares to do the New Year’s cleaning for her family. Even though she is old enough to have back pain after sweeping the floor, she still performs every task of her mother’s job with simplicity and dedication. Gao Huanying honestly says she doesn’t believe her son will be able to help with the old age, her daughter-in-law is always a layer apart, now washing dishes, laundry and cooking, her daughter-in-law thinks Gao Huanying is doing it as a matter of course, “We are very careful what we say at home, we can’t say it out loud. “
She talked about her mother, who gave birth to three daughters and one son, and four people took turns to give their mother old age. In the first few years, whenever it was the brother’s turn, those three months sister-in-law secretly moved mom to a nursing home to raise. That nursing home was in very poor condition. Later, because of the demolition of Mom’s house, the demolition money was divided into five parts, and the extra one was given to the brother’s children. The brother-in-law then changed her attitude and was willing to take care of her mother at home.
Gao Huanying also mentioned that a friend of hers, who lived alone, was obsessed with health care products for a while and didn’t take medicine when she got sick. Later, her daughter-in-law found her dead on the sofa with the TV on, a shoe on the floor, and a pool of blood next to her. No one knows how she died. The daughter-in-law opened the cupboard and found it filled with bottles and jars, health pillows and health clothes. “It was really scary. ” Gao Huanying said.
She was more worried about her little sister – the widow who fought with Heng Fu Hai’s boss. Her sister was too timid to meet the reporter, and she said on the phone, “I’ve been cheated, are you here to cheat me? “The sister also said with Gao Huanying that she would die one day to the Heng Fu Hai nursing home.
And Taojiang’s Ding Lihua is hidden from her husband and daughter reported to the nursing home. Halfway through the conversation, the wooden door pushed open – her husband had returned. Ding Lihua hurriedly said, guests, this is the hospital to do a survey of people, to understand the recovery after surgery. The old man believed it and started to say that he owed 70,000 to 80,000 for her hemangioma surgery. Now he goes out every day as an electrician, repairing water pipes, earning a couple of hundred dollars a day when business is good, slowly paying off the debt.
Ding Lihua’s daughter repeatedly stressed that she “married close”, she was sad that her home is only a bridge away from her mother’s home, a five-minute ride on an electric bike to her mother’s home, but I didn’t expect my mother to report to a nursing home without telling anyone. She never thought about it and thought she could take good care of her mom. She prepared vegetables for her mom every week (she was doing community group buying), and she took care of her mom during her surgery.
But Mom didn’t tell her about the nursing home thunderstorm until the second time she went in for surgery and thought she was going to not make it. The daughter couldn’t figure out what Ding Lihua was thinking.
“What son or daughter wouldn’t be sad to hear that? “She did not dare to say this in front of her mother.
Before that, Ding Lihua took her daughter and me to the Duhao Nursing Home for a spin. In the outskirts of the county, half an hour’s drive from Zengjiaping, Duhao Nursing Home is still in operation. In the dark, a brand new building out of place in the county environment stands, with bright, warm lights radiating from the windows and three large red letters standing on the roof, “Glory Home Three big red letters stand on the top of the building, “Glory Home”, and in front of it is a supporting “elderly service hospital”. The back end of the old age, the front medical care, this is Ding Lihua in the countryside is difficult to see the scene.
Ding Lihua said while walking that the conditions here are really good. The 50,000 yuan she paid was the threshold fee to stay in this nursing home, and the reservation was for a relatively cheap double room. But now, if she wants to stay in this nursing home, she has to pay extra money at the price of non-members, and the principal she paid no longer counts. Ding Lihua could not figure out why she could no longer stay in this nice, clean, comfortable nursing home.
Four departing salesmen, still running nursing home
For several months after the storm, Wu Xiufang, a salesperson at Hengfuhai, did not look for work again, feeling that she was “made to look like a human being and a ghost”. At the end of August last year, the police called her and told her to return all her wages during her employment with Heng Fook Hai. She felt aggrieved, she did not take the money from the elderly. And, the guaranteed salary is a thousand dollars, performance commission is largely linked to expenses, to run more customers, from time to time to the elderly home to carry some fruit to visit, earn money to pay the rent, it is impossible to keep intact.
She scraped together one or two hundred thousand out. Later she still left a record.
She is 40 years old, out of school to work in the field. 2017 she joined Heng Fu Hai, hoping to change the lifestyle, closer to home, “anyway, what documents are complete in that, we are all rural, and do not know some of this “.
Wu Xiufang thinks she didn’t do anything wrong. When the training, the boss asked them to go to hand out leaflets, the documents issued by the government to show them, “said this senior citizen apartment, in the next one or two decades are very popular, told us to do a good job. She claimed that she had only given out leaflets to the elderly, all on their own volition. As for the rumored salesman to wash the feet of the elderly, Wu Xiufang said, “so low and low have not done, are open and honest. “
In March last year, the boss at work to the salesman meeting, a total of three or four people came scattered, said the impact of the epidemic, the money turnover can not come, take the money to postpone a couple of months. Also affected by the epidemic, the more there is an epidemic, the more customers have to take out. Slowly the boss said again to postpone three months, and the time kept extending. In the end, the boss was taken away. Her sister-in-law followed and invested 100,000 yuan and didn’t take it out. Her sister-in-law was lucky and took the money out last April.
Wu Xiufang re-found a job last month, selling stores in Taojiang County. She went on and began to think: this is also taking performance, in case something goes wrong with the house, will I be looking for again? She went to the boss to resign, the reason is, “in case you this is false, I can not afford to take responsibility. The other party said, “How is that possible? Our documents are so complete”. She thought to herself, “In the past, the documents were not so complete in Heng Fu Hai, and the boss was so sure?
In the center of the city, Heng Fu Hai Nursing Home is still operating normally, with more than 80 elderly people living there. When I walked into the room, the facilities were indeed “matching the level of a three- or four-star hotel” as the old man said: wooden floors, walnut beds, and continuous heat from the floor heating. A few elderly people are playing mahjong with great enthusiasm. But the senior service center down the street, which has “Filial piety for Chinese sons and daughters” written on the wall, has closed its doors.
The office where Cao Yinglin invested in Nano Senior Care is hidden in a rundown alley. The signboard at the entrance is a piece of badly worn cardboard with a golden arch painted on it, “Welcome to Nano Senior Living”. The owner of the fruit store downstairs said in a negative way, “There is no such thing as a retirement home, the owner has run away.
Five “This is me”
After three days of drumming for the soul of the old man who jumped into the river, Zhang Zhicheng suffered from wind chill, coughing and hoarse voice. Drumming is his only hobby and all he has to live for. The sanitation workers by the river have heard of him and know that he is 60 years old, fatherless, motherless and childless. Because of a high fever as a child, he has an intellectual disability, “equivalent to that of an 8 or 9 year old. “
In a KTV called “Arirang” by the river, I met Zhang Zhicheng and his sister. The sister, Zhang Hao, heard from a friend that her brother had made the headlines. When she returned to the KTV, she asked her brother, why are you banging the drum. The brother said he wanted to “knock up” the elderly, and said those who harm the elderly deserve to die. But as for more – such as the matter of fame, the brother did not quite understand. Just when the sister pointed to the screenshot on the video and asked him who this was, the brother knew to nod, “This is me. “
Zhang Hao is 56 years old. Since her husband died, she never married – now her brother lives in her house, every morning, her brother followed her behind to work, Food and housing are managed by her. With her brother in tow, where would anyone want to marry her? Zhang Zhicheng was recognized as disabled three, a monthly allowance of 400 yuan, the sister said, which is not even enough to eat breakfast. But she can’t bear to let her brother go to the orphanage to “wait for death”.
At 4 p.m., Zhang Zhicheng woke up from his nap. When he came downstairs, Zhang Hao pulled his jacket down jacket, carefully for him to wrap a good scarf. Zhang Zhicheng is not tall, 5 meters tall, wearing a hat with long eyelashes, and let his sister fiddle with it obediently. His lounge room is stacked with large drums, snare drums, gongs and cymbals. When playing the drums for Cao Yinglin, Zhang Zhicheng took the latest one. It was a gift from his sister for his 60th birthday.
Zhang Zhicheng once again beat the drum, without rhythmically tapping the drum. A black dog chained at the door was awakened by the sound of the drum. The black dog called Beibei, originally wandering in the river, six months ago, Zhang Hao adopted it. Now, the brother’s friends in addition to those drums, there is only this dog. If you get older, what about your brother and your own retirement? She also has no answer.
(In the article, except for Cao Yinglin, Zhang Zhicheng, Liu Yimu, Tang Chao, other characters are pseudonyms.
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