Nursing home outcry challenges old values
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, August 10, 2015
Work on a nursing home project in Yangpu District of Shanghai has been suspended after nearby residents staged a protest against what they termed "old, sick people" living nearby.
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As Shanghai's population ages rapidly, senior care facilities are becoming popular. Yet construction work on a nursing home in Yangpu District had to be suspended earlier this year, following protests from nearby residents. This has led to questions over whether traditional respect toward the elderly is being lost. |
Some have called the facility a hospice, likening it to a place where people simply go to die.
"We don't want to sleep near corpses, and we cannot psychologically accept this senior care home in our midst," said 70-year-old Xiao Hua, who lives in the nearby Xinyi Yayuan residential complex on Longchang Road.
A banner reading "Get out, dead people's home!" was strung across one building.
This reaction is strange, to say the least, in a country where old people have traditionally been revered and facilities for the aged are in acute shortage amid a rapidly aging population.
"We didn't expect this kind of local opposition," said Lu Yan, one of the managers involved in the project.
The site for the Yanji No. 2 Senior Home at 3531 Zhoujiazui Road was formerly a student dormitory that is now being converted into a 291-bed home for the aged. Work on the 30-million-yuan (US$4.8 million) project began in March.
The project, scheduled to be completed by the end of this year, was approved by the Yangpu District government as part of a Shanghai's overall plan to address the shortage of senior care facilities.
The project site, which has been vacant since 2013, is owned by INESA (Group) Co, a state-owned assets management firm, and is now managed by INESA subsidiary Shanghai Cangxin Investment Management Consultation Co.
Work on the project was suspended less than two months after it began. Since then, there have been a number of community meetings involving the district civil affairs office, the property management company, construction authorities and residents. So far, the residents haven't budged in their opposition.
Residents said they weren't aware that the site would be turned into a senior care home until refurbishing began.
"It's too close to our community, which will make the area messy and noisy and affect our daily lives," said Huang Tongjun, a resident who lives in Xinyi Yayuan.
"We don't want to stand on our balconies and see old people with physical disabilities being treated," Huang added. "We don't want to hear their crying and the sounds of ambulances. The children's playground will be next door to the senior home, which will scare the children."
The residents said living near a facility that will be offering hospice care for the dying will be like living next to a mortuary.
Several residents assured Shanghai Daily reporters that they don't oppose the concept of facilities for the aged, but it's a matter of "not in my backyard." They complain their property values will drop, and illnesses like pneumonia may spread from the home to residential areas.
Cangxin will run the senior care home, with government subsidies.
Yangpu is an old industrial area of Shanghai, with large numbers of retirees, said Cangxin manager Lu. The area has an acute shortage of senior care homes, she said.
Her company has given assurances that the new facility will have neither hospice care nor mortuary facilities. The senior home will have a separate, gated entrance. Blueprints of the project, distributed to area residents, have failed to assuage their opposition.
"Some residents in the complex view us as the enemy and don't trust us," said a district official who asked to remain anonymous.
"Talks have been fruitless. This is the first time we have had any kind of opposition. We have other senior care homes in the district next to residential complexes and have had no problems."
The protests are disheartening to officials concerned about the aging population.
The number of Shanghai residents aged 60 or older grew 7 percent last year to more than 4.1 million, or nearly 30 percent of all residents. The number is set to surpass 6 million by 2025, according to the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau.
As the population ages and more young relatives find it difficult to take care of elderly kin at home, vacancies in senior care facilities are becoming scarcer. People sometimes have to wait years for an available bed.
There were 660 registered nursing homes in the city last year, with 114,907 beds, or just enough places to serve 2.8 percent of the city's over-60 population.
In the Yanji area where the new project is located, the target is to have 525 beds before 2020 to meet the goal of serving 3 percent of the senior population. At present there are 209 beds.
The "not-in-my-backyard" (Nimby) mentality is not that rare in China where hospice care is concerned.
The Yangpu District government last year halted a plan to build a hospice center with more than 1,000 beds on Yingkou Road, close to a residential community, after the project provoked outrage among area residents.
Late last year, residents in Huijing Jialiyuan, a residential complex in Xuhui District, also protested the construction of a hospital for tumor patients because they said they didn't want to hear the sounds of people crying and ambulance sirens or see vehicles carrying corpses. That work also was suspended.
Is this all just a manifestation of the fact that death is still largely a taboo subject in China?
Gu Xiaoming, a sociologist from Shanghai's Fudan University, said it would be better to develop mixed-community living instead of isolating the old in special facilities.
People are content if family members die at home or in a hospital, but they don't like the idea of institutionalized dying, he said.
"We really can't change this mindset," he said. "If there was a hospital right next to your home, you wouldn't complain. But mention hospice care, and the red flags go up."
Gu suggested a change in terminology might help.
"We don't have to call them hospice care," he said. "We could call it a senior cadres ward. We just have to change the image. I mean, how would it sound if we called the intensive care unit of a hospital the death ward?"
He suggested that nursing homes could become departments within hospitals.
In Germany, he added, kindergartens are sometimes located next to elderly homes so that children, from an early age, learn to grow up and live around the aged.
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