Han Zicheng survived the Japanese invasion, the Chinese civil war and the Cultural Revolution, but he knew he could not endure the sorrow of living alone.
On a chilly day in December, the 85-year-old Chinese grandfather gathered some scraps of white paper and wrote out a pitch in blue ink: “Looking for someone to adopt me.”
“Lonely old man in his 80s. Strong-bodied. Can shop, cook and take care of himself. No chronic illness. I retired from a scientific research institute in Tianjin, with a monthly pension of 6,000 RMB [$950] a month,” he wrote.
“I won’t go to a nursing home. My hope is that a kindhearted person or family will adopt me, nourish me through old age and bury my body when I’m dead.”
He taped a copy to a bus shelter in his busy neighborhood.
Then he went home to wait.
Han was desperate for company. He said his wife had died. His sons were out of touch. His neighbors had kids to raise and elderly parents of their own.
He was fit enough to ride his bike to the market to buy chestnuts, eggs and buns, but he knew that his health would one day fail him. He also knew he was but one of tens of millions of Chinese growing old without enough support.
Improved living standards and the one-child policy have turned China’s population pyramid upside down. Already, 15 percent of Chinese are older than 60. By 2040, it will be nearly one in four, according to current projections.
It’s a demographic crisis that threatens China’s economy and the fabric of family life. Businesses must chug along with fewer workers. A generation of single children care for aging parents on their own.
In 2013, the Chinese government made a law mandating parental visits. In practice, millions of “empty nest” elderly — seniors who don’t live with their spouses or children — have little protection. Children leave. The social safety net is full of holes.
Han had tried to find caregivers. This time, a woman saw him taping a note to a store window, snapped a picture and posted it on social media with a plea: “I hope warmhearted people can help.”
A television crew from an online site called Pear Video came to tell the story of the lonely Tianjin grandpa. Han’s phone started ringing.
And through his last three months, it did not stop.
Family difficult to find
At first, Han was hopeful.
He had been trying for years to get people to listen to him, stopping neighbors to tell them he was lonely, that he was scared of dying, that he didn’t want to die alone.
Now people were reaching out, showing concern. A local restaurant offered food. A journalist from Hebei province promised to visit. He struck up a telephone friendship with a 20-year-old law student in the south.
But his mood soured when he realized the family he imagined would be tough to find. He rejected offers he considered below him. When a migrant worker called in January, he dismissed him and hung up the phone.
Han had lived through a lot. Born in 1932, he was a boy when the Japanese invaded China, a teenager when Mao Zedong founded the People’s Republic, a young man in the hungry years that followed.
He got a job working at a factory, met his wife, and eventually enrolled in night classes and then at a university. Their sons grew up during the Cultural Revolution, a decade of mayhem that fractured families and minds.
“Chinese people my age have really suffered,” he said.
Having endured so much, his generation expected to grow old like those before them: living in a family compound, cared for by sons and grandsons. For Han and millions of others, that has not happened. That made him mad.
The problem, Han told anyone who would listen, was that young people have abandoned the old model, but the government had yet to find a new system for senior care.
Jiang Quanbao, a professor of demography at the Institute for Population and Development Studies at Xi’an Jiaotong University, said the challenge is that China is both an aging society and a developing country. China “got old before it got rich,” he said.
Peng Xizhe, a professor of population and development at Shanghai’s Fudan University, called the supply and quality of nursing homes in China “seriously inadequate.”
Even those like Han who could afford a decent room in a nursing home are generally skeptical. Older people don’t want their peers to think their children abandoned them, Peng said. Children are afraid of appearing unfilial.
Han said that he had a falling-out with one son and that the other moved to Canada in 2003 and didn’t call him often. But he declined to provide their contact numbers, saying he didn’t want to embarrass them.
Han compared his plight to a withering plant. Elderly people are “like flowers and trees,” he said. “If we are not watered, we cannot grow.”
But when people who saw his story called to check in, he often launched into tirades against the government or the food at the local seniors home — which he tried and hated. The portions were too small for the price, he said. The soup was thin.
As winter settled in, the calls became less frequent. Han was once again consumed by fear that he would die in bed, alone. The Washington Post decided to keep tabs on him, to see how his quest would turn out.
Old age brings anger
But the last weeks of Han’s life were shrouded by stubborn silence and missed calls. After his death, his neighbors and his son were unable or unwilling to shed light on the circumstances of his final days. What is clear is that the system failed him — and that it probably will fail others.
The Washington Post
