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Daniel Shintag, a university student in Belgium is reading Tang poetry on mother love for the seniors. Both the elder and young people are impressed by Daniel’s devotion and his perfect Chinese.
Like a coin, modern human society has two faces. On one hand, there's the bright and cheery optimism of the rich and fortunate. Happy, prosperous families fill the streets with light and good humour; luxurious consumer goods are aplenty, and there's enough living space for everyone. Even life's more conventional basic needs are easily fulfilled nowadays: a shower, a bathroom, a fully-equipped kitchen, a TV set, a computer. That's city life for the “normal” middle class, and China is no different to any other country in the world in that aspect. Then there's a side to human society that one does |
not perceive in the bustling city streets: the darker side of the coin, if you will. It's the form of human society one does not read about in a normal newspaper article, the zone whose dwellers lack almost everything a regular city resident would take for granted. On the trip to the Yixing seniors' home on the outskirts of Beijing, we – a group of Chinese volunteers and foreign students, including the undersigned – got a chance to have a glance, however fleeting, at that unpleasant side of human condition.
As for the volunteers themselves, I have nothing but praise. Setting everything aside for a few hours in order to commit oneself to help the more unfortunate is a very admirable course of action. That day, each and every volunteer did his or her best to liven up the rather dreary main hall of the seniors' home. Everyone had something to give, and so, each show and skit was unique to the one who performed it: there were a “snake girl” gig, song, dance, various musical performances, and even a Tang poems recitation by the undersigned. Later on, the volunteers organised a collective birthday party for all the elderly people who had celebrated their birthday that month. Afterwards, the volunteers moved on to visit the seniors in their respective rooms of residence, distributing small gifts and tokens to the pleasantly surprised geriatrics. Overall, it was quite a cheery early afternoon for everyone, and I'm pretty sure the elderly enjoyed the visit a lot.
Nevertheless, the excursion left me with a slightly bitter taste. While the elderly certainly seemed happy to see us youngsters, I can't even conceive of how life must be like for the seniors after the enthusiastic visitors have all left the home. Located in a place so far-removed from the city's vivid and crowded centre, the home and its facilities definitely had a shabby and desolate quality to them. The conditions in the seniors' rooms are far from ideal, and living space seemed to be in short order. And while the professional staff seemed nice enough, I was thinking to myself how lonely the seniors (or at least those who were still in their right mind) must be feeling when visiting hours are over. This is true for every seniors' home on earth, but in a country such as China, where families would traditionally encompass several generations living under the same roof, being lonely and without family can be an especially traumatic experience. Moreover, as far as I can understand, residents of seniors' homes are usually people who have either outlived their close family or have been abandoned by their relatives. Thoughts such as these are quite disturbing, and I would hope a change of treatment policy to be in order, if only to give the seniors the impression they are still part of a living, breathing, moving human society, and not just left-overs ready for the trash bin.
At any rate, a big kudos to the Lotus Homestay foundation for organising this excursion, and to all the participating volunteers: while the seniors' actual living conditions may not have changed a lot due to our visit, brightening someone's day, even for a single minute, can certainly give a huge spiritual boost to all involved. Good luck with the next excursions – and I hope there'll be plenty more of those in the near future! |