Time to Confront an Aging City

Since March 10^th, four Shanghai museums and memorials have been made free to the public. Visitors to the Shanghai Museum reached 5,900/day on the first day, double the previous level, and this weekend the Shanghai Museum is expected to see a record number or visitors. Most of the visitors on the first day were retired people.Free entrance to the museums is supposed to benefit the whole public, but apparently it is the elderly who benefit from it most, as most other people are either at school or work during the weekdays.

This reminds me of some TV news I watched long time ago, which was about retirees taking a free supermarket shuttle bus to the supermarket in the mornings, and spending a whole day chatting with their friends while sitting there enjoying the free heating or the cool, air-conditioned air. They would return by free bus in the late afternoon. Those shuttle buses were packed with these low-spending old people and the drivers and supermarket stuff could do nothing about it. The bus I used to take to work was full every morning before 10am, and I had to be very careful when elbowing onto the bus as there were so many seniors in their late 60s and even 70s. I rarely had a seat during my 30-minute trip because the young should let the old sit! I have always strongly felt that Shanghai is a city of the aging.

The aging of Shanghai’s population has become a significant trend. While seniors made up 7% of the population in China in 2005, in Shanghai the percentage was 19.58. The population of people who are over 60 years old is expected to account for 16.3% of the whole population of Shanghai in 2010, and 22.1% in 2020. By 2025, 30 out of 100 Shanghai residents will be over 65, and 10 out of those will be over 80 years old.

How will they spend their time besides sitting outside of their old houses, playing Mahjong, forming long queues outside museums, and swelling the crowds in buses? They should be encouraged to have their own interests, and neighborhood communities and governments should organize more activities, clubs and interest groups to help them enjoy their time and make better use of social resources. 

Claire Li