Golden Home for Senior Citizens

Nanxun, a riverside town in northern Zhejiang, boasts a long history of prosperity, culture, and architecture. Nowadays, it boasts a unique rest home for old people to spend their golden years. It is unique because it offers good facilities and affordable accommodations and services and it is now designated by the central government as China’s first ever commercialized private rest home for old people.

Located in the south of the Yangtze River Delta, the rest home is a pilot project of Zhejiang Province for commercializing rest homes for the aged. With an investment of 50 million yuan from Zhejiang Jiu’an Public Undertaking Company in 1997, the rest home is a large compound with a total floor space of 30,000 square meters. It comprises an apartment building, a club and a medical center for the aged as well as a business street and some other business facilities.

Over the last thirteen years, the rest home has catered to 255 senior residents from all over the Yangtze River Delta. There are 121 long-term in-house residents at present. They are averagely 76 years old, ranging from 95 to 65.

Xu Jianzhen and Shao Juying are husband and wife. They used to own two adjacent apartments in Shanghai. In order to live more comfortably, they had the two apartments rebuilt into a single unit. However, they sold the property in 1998 and came to Nanxun to spend their evening years. In 2004, their daughter Xu Xin, once the captain of Chinese national women’s volleyball team, persuaded them to move back to Shanghai and stayed with her in a villa. The parents lived there for a year before they decided to move back to the rest home in Nanxun. They missed the greater freedom, better environment and more comfortable life at the rest home in Nanxun.

Niu Juyan, a retired teacher and widow, went to stay with her daughter in America. After she received the green card, she also received regular subsidies. But she failed to adjust to the life in her daughter’s apartment on the 38th floor in an apartment building. She complained that the 38th floor kept her away from the earth energy. Moreover, she couldn’t speak English. She came back to Nanxun and entered the rest home where she fell in love with Shen Dekun, a neighbor at the rest home. In 2004, they got married.

Such a rest home is a response to the changing society in China. Traditionally, a son will take care of the aged parents. Only those who did not havechildren would choose to spend their last years in rest homes. Nowadays, many empty nesters choose to come to rest homes because they dislike empty nests.

The rest home in Nanxun is regarded as a paradise for the aged. Zhang Yunzhao, a retired teacher, frequents the club for the aged. She comments that when she shuts the door, the apartment is her own world; when she opens the door, it is a big family. The club opens to all the senior citizens at the rest home and those in Nanxun Town. The 2,000-m2 indoor club space houses a reading room, a fitness center, and a game room. The club also has an outdoor sports ground. At present the membership fee is 1 yuan a month and the club has 1,200 members. The rest home offers a full-ranged system where senior citizens can choose to take part in various events to while away their time and have fun. The rest home also organizes events for people at the rest home and beyond to come together.

How does the rest home as a business support itself? Most such rest homes for senior citizens across the country lose money, for pensioners can hardly afford to live in rest homes where charges are beyond their means. Though private rest homes enjoy tax breaks, they can’t mortgage their properties for loans and they have no way to get low-interest loans from banks.

The rest home in Nanxun struggled in its first few years. The company needs to pay 2.5 million in interest a year and the rest home needs 2.5 million a year to keep it run normally. In order to make ends meet, Zhu Peide, the entrepreneur, operates businesses such as a hotel, a restaurant, a hospital, a shopping street, and a few tourism attractions. From the proceeds of these facilities, more than 600,000 a year go into the rest home’s daily operation. Now the company can make the ends meet and keep itself above the breakeven point.

After paying a deposit of 60,000 yuan, a couple or a single old citizen can move into an apartment of a bedroom, a sitting room, a kitchen and a bathroom. The occupants need to pay 300 yuan a month for the use of the apartment. When occupants leave the rest home, they get back their deposits.