Below you will find my translation of an October 4, 2012 news article titled The President of a Nursing Home Tells her “Family” Story, coming to you the Guanxi province’s government-sponsored online publication Modern Life. This isostensibly a report about one Chinese entrepreneur’s experience in starting and running a nursing home in the city of Nanning, the capital of Guanxi Province, and a city of over 6.6 million people. Of course, it may also be a propaganda piece designed to showcase the government’s commitment to the traditional Chinese value of filial piety.
Filial piety is modern China’s equivalent of America’s Social Security issue – all politicians pay homage to it in order to score easy political points, but few are able, and even fewer are willing to engage with it in a meaningful way. In either event, the attitudes expressed within the piece positively highlight entrepreneurship and personal initiative as a response to China’s aging crisis, and are a good example of the type of morality issues that color China’s national attitudes about the elderly. Like it? Hate it? Did I mess up the translation? Sound off in comments or through our contact form.
The President of a Nursing Home Facility Tells her “Family” Story
养老院的院长讲述她“家”的故事
对于陆丽娟来说，养老院就是她的另一个“家”。从接手创办到经营管理，陆丽娟的养老院走过了5年。这些年，陆丽娟的这个“家”有着怎样的故事？10月3日，在南宁市颐康养老院里，现年60岁的院长陆丽娟向记者娓娓道来。
陆丽娟与颐康养老院的缘分，还要从5年前说起。过去，颐康养老院并非这个名字，它的前身是一个机构的养老院。由于经济等多方面原因，该机构决定将养老院转出去。陆丽娟那时在该机构里做义工，过后毅然将养老院承包下来。
陆丽娟刚接手时，养老院的房子破旧、设备残缺。为了让养老院恢复生机，她和家人每天一大早就来装修房子，粉刷墙壁、安装水电、铺床搭柜……样样事情亲力亲为。
养老院装修后，接着面临招工难的问题。为了打理好养老院，陆丽娟把床从家里搬到养老院。一间小办公室，前半部分是办公的地方，后半部分就是她的卧室。陆丽娟学医的小儿子大学毕业后，也回来帮忙打理养老院。
2007年，陆丽娟给养老院起了新名字：颐康养老院，并正式对外接收老人。
变化 - 成员从1人发展到60人
万事开头难，颐康养老院开张近2个月，居然没有一位老人入住。“孩子们都劝我放弃，但我坚持要做下去。”陆丽娟回忆说。
陆丽娟过后印制了许多传单，到街上发给人们，还让小儿子在网上发布消息。不久，养老院迎来了第一位成员罗奶奶。罗奶奶住进来后，陆丽娟怕她孤单，便搬过去和她一起住。陆丽娟白天为罗奶奶洗衣做饭，晚上陪她聊天。现在，罗奶奶已经94岁，但她仍能自行走动，精神抖擞。
看到老人入住，还得到了很好的照顾，过后一些家属纷纷表示想将家中老人交给养老院帮照看。先是以前住过的老人，再到附近的街坊邻居，如今南宁周边的县 城，也有老人到养老院里住下。目前，该养老院的“家庭成员”已达到60人。大家居住在一起，聊天、读书、看报、打牌，其乐融融。
感悟 - 社会尊老爱老风气变浓
转眼间5年过去了，回首这几年经营养老院的日子，陆丽娟感触良多。照顾老人是一项长期而繁琐的工作，陆丽娟创办养老院以来，便没有多少时间陪家人，逢年 过节更是跑到养老院与老人一起过。“家人一直都很理解，他们带给我的感动让我可以把更多的爱倾注到老人身上。”陆丽娟说。
而社会对于 老人的关爱也越来越多。以前，爱心人士更多是在重阳节时来看望老人，如今周末都会有人提着营养品来关心老人。这些爱心人士中既有老师和学生，也有企业员工 和军人。还有不少人常到养老院来当义工，免费照顾老人，其中有一位40多岁的妇女，每周六下午都过来帮忙扫地、拖地、帮老人洗澡。
在养老院里，陆丽娟看着老人们健康快乐地生活，感受着社会对老人的关爱，她觉得这个“大家庭”很温暖。问及这些年这个“家”有什么变化，陆丽娟说：“这个“家”越来越好，社会的关爱越来越浓。”
For Liu Lijuan, the nursing home is just like another family. From when she took it upon herself to establish the home, on through her role in its operations and management, Lijuan’s nursing home experience has lasted more than five years. But, just what is Lijuan’s story? October 3, 2012, inside of Nanning’s “Healthy Nursing Home,” 60 year old nursing home president Liuli Juan gives a spirited story to your humble reporters.
To understand how Liu LiJuan and the Healthy Nursing Home came to be, it is important to start at the beginning, five years ago. It used to be that Healthy Nursing Home was run by an agency, and went by a different name, or rather, no name at all. The agency decided for a myriad of reasons stemming from underlying economic troubles to cut their losses and set the nursing home adrift. At the time that these considerations were still being pondered, Lijuan worked at that agency nursing home as a volunteer. She decided to take on the nursing home’s contract.
When Lijuan took over the contract, the nursing home was dilapidated. Its equipment was crippled. In order to breathe new life into the nursing home, she and her family got up early in the morning to renovate the rooms, paint the walls, to set up flowing water and electricity, to make beds and install new cabinets; they were hands on with every aspect of the project.
After fixing up the nursing home they had to face the fact that they needed to find a staff. In order to better manage the needs of the project, Lijuan moved the bed from her house into the nursing home. She made a makeshift office in a single room of the facility – half the room was her workspace and half the room was her bedroom. After her son graduated from medical school, he also came to help manage the facility.
In 2007, Lijuan’s nursing home changes its name to Health Nursing home. The name was more formal and so better suited for attracting elderly patrons from a wider area than just the nursing home’s immediate neighborhood.
Change: membership grows from 1 to 60
All things have hard beginnings, and so it was with the Health Nursing Home, which unexpectedly after two months still had no elderly residents. “All of my children tried to persuade me to give up, but I was determined to persevere and carry on,” Lijuan said in describing those difficult first two months.
Lijuan printed off a lot of flyers, and started distributing them to people on the street, while her children took to the internet to post information about the facility. In no time, Healthy Nursing Home welcomed its first resident, grandma Luo. After grandma Luo’s arrival, however, Lijuan began to fear that grandma Luo would be lonely living by herself. So Lijuan finished the move she began a few months prior, and moved to the facility to live with grandma Luo. Everyday Lijuan washed grandma Luo’s clothes and made her food. At night she kept grandma Luo company. Right now, granny Luo is already ninety-four years old, but she can still move on her own and she is in high spirits.
When they saw that an elderly person had actually entered Lijuan’s nursing home and that they were receiving excellent care, other families came to see Lijuan one after another to see if they could enroll their elderly family members into the nursing home. The first group to come were the elderly people who had lived in the old agency run facility before Lijuan’s improvements. Next came neighbors from the surrounding area. Today, there are even residents from cities and counties outside of Nanning. Currently, this “resident family” has reached 60 members. Everyone lives together in great harmony, chatting, reading books, reading newspapers, playing cards.
Insight: Society’s awareness of the elderly is becoming more pronounced
The last five years flew by in a flash. Looking back on her many days of managing the nursing home over these years, Lijuan has deep feelings. Taking care of the elderly is long and cumbersome work. Since founding the nursing home, Lijuan hasn’t had much time to visit her family. Every year during holidays she would run back to the nursing home to live with her residents. ”My family all understand, they give me the strength to pour ever more love towards the elderly,” she says.
Society’s concern for the aged has also increased over time, in Nanning. Previously, it was customary for people who cared to come visit the nursing home during the Chong Yang Festival. Now, people come bearing food for the residents every weekend. There are students and teachers, but also industry workers and soldiers. There is also a sizable number of people who often come to work in a volunteer capacity, to take care of residents for free. Among this latter group there is a forty-year old woman who comes every Saturday to help sweep the floor and to help the elderly wash themselves.
Inside the facility, Liu Lijuan, while watching to make sure her residents lives are happy and health and feeling touched by society’s concern for the elderly, feels very good about her large family. When asked what changes these years have brought to her second family, Liuli said, “My other “family” is only getting better, and so is society’s awareness senior’s needs.”
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Damjan – Great contribution. It will be interesting to look back at this story years down the road and see if she, or others like her, are the successful entrepreneurs like those in the US and EU who have found a way to marry their passion for the elderly with a successful business.
Thank you, Benjamin. I agree – going back to see what has happened with this entrepreneurs is going to be a lot of fun. I wonder if Western operators trying to do the same thing as the woman in this piece have their own stories about run ins with their Chinese entrepreneur counterparts.