Recently, an article entitled "Well-known Old Bakery 85 Degrees C, Full of "Frustrated" Shanghai Old People" sparked heated discussions on the Internet. The elderly in the article often appear in an 85-degree C bakery in Pengpu New Village, Jing'an District, Shanghai, and it will become a fixed place for the elderly to pass the time from noon to afternoon every weekday.
Visual China.
In fact, there is much more than this bakery that has been "occupied" by the old people. On a weekday afternoon in January, I saw two Starbucks and a McDonald's in Shanghai's Minhang District, all full of elderly people. They either got together to chat, or just found a corner to sit and use ** software to broadcast their day's latest situation, and some couples, one seat per person, leaned back and took a nap.
A clerk at a coffee shop told me that about 30 percent of the elderly people in the room "didn't order anything." "We can't drive them away, a lot of people actually come every day, I'm used to it. The young clerk said that sometimes when he sees his uncles and aunts here, it is like seeing his retired parents in his hometown, "The store is open, and it is good to give the old people a place to rest."
Cafes and bakeries meet almost every element that the elderly want: warmth, proximity to home, a lot of peers, and inexpensive things. As the above-mentioned hot article said, "In the lives of the elderly, there is indeed a lack of such a public space".
Shanghai is currently the city with the highest degree of aging in China. Many of Shanghai's age-appropriate practices are worth replicating and promoting across the country. For example, the elderly meal service points and elderly canteens all over Shanghai have effectively solved the needs of the elderly and nearby white-collar workers for three meals a day in an affordable and clean manner. For example, there are day care centers and elderly care homes in almost every community, which are open and transparent, providing support services for the disabled elderly, semi-disabled elderly, and the elderly who have just undergone surgery and have no one to take care of them.
On the Shanghai pension service platform, all the service places for the elderly have contact**, and some places have not only landlines, but also mobile phone numbers. There are 2,279 meal service centers for the elderly, 921 day care centers, and 2,034 elderly care homes. On the homepage of a home for the elderly in the most central area of Shanghai's Huangpu district, it is stated that the monthly cost of a bed plus nursing care is about 2,700 yuan to 3,300 yuan.
However, why do the elderly still feel that "there is no public space around them"? I made further inquiries and found that there are actually 6,248 activity rooms for the elderly, 487 comprehensive service centers for the elderly, and 3,720 good-neighbor points in Shanghai. These could theoretically provide public spaces for the elderly who can take care of themselves.
But why don't the old people go? I opened the homepage of several of the aforementioned activity spaces, and each space showed its own "configuration" with ** - a comprehensive old service center in a town in the northern suburbs, with an area of 1050 square meters, which has desks, computers, conference rooms, reclining chairs, massage chairs, and talk rooms; In the day service center for the elderly in a town in the southern suburbs, there are 8 single sofas, each sofa is neatly stacked with a small blanket, as well as a gym equipped with stair climbing machines and treadmills, and a reading room with a few books scrawled; a 200-square-meter meal center in the central city, set up in a nursing home guarded by security guards; A residential neighborhood in the central city, the 88-square-meter space is hidden in an iron railing gate about seven or eight meters wide, and the room is empty; In the northern suburbs, the Good Neighbor Point is located in the village council office, with an old desk, three old stools, and a broom and dustpan in a 150-square-metre space.
Visual China.
A social worker who has worked in the elderly care service industry for five years said, "I think we need to reflect. Who is our community's senior service facility built for? There are more and more facilities, but how much do the elderly serve? What kind of services should we provide? ”
I noticed that although the public pension space is sincere, it lacks warmth; There is space, but there is a lack of operations. For example, grassroots streets and village neighborhood committees have allocated more than 100 square meters or even thousands of square meters of space to serve the elderly, which can be described as "full of sincerity" in Shanghai, where every inch of land is valuable, but these spaces lack warm layout, and some are equipped with air conditioning, but they cannot be used for a long time; Some stipulate the opening and closing times, but there may not always be someone responsible for opening and closing the door; Although some people have purchased fitness facilities, they may not take into account the "ageing" of these facilities, and the elderly with inconvenient legs and feet cannot "climb" the stair climbing machine.
The empty ** pension space is not about any "operation". Most of these spaces are still at the niche level of "rehearsals for the elderly dance team", and every time they are used, they may have to apply to the staff of the neighborhood committee and make a report. An important reason is that the pension space is generally set up in the office space of the grassroots department, and the door is opened and closed with the commuting time of the staff.
According to data from the National Health Commission, it is expected that by the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, the total number of elderly people aged 60 and above in China will exceed 300 million, accounting for more than 20%, entering the stage of moderate aging. Around 2035, the elderly population aged 60 and above will exceed 400 million, accounting for more than 30% of the total population, entering the stage of severe aging.
In the face of more and more elderly people, whether the service space for the elderly can be used as soon as possible and whether the operational capacity can be improved is a problem that needs to be solved urgently in front of many city managers.
Written by Wang Yejie.
*: China Youth Daily client).