After her grandson was born three years ago, Feng Junru left her home in northeast China and moved to Tianjin to look after him. She took care of her grandson every day and found herself busier than she had been before she retired. In addition to taking care of the child, she undertook other household chores such as shopping for vegetables, cooking and cleaning.

She had expected to be less busy after her grandson was old enough to begin kindergarten. However, she found herself feeling lonely after taking her grandson to kindergarten each day. "I get up at 7 a.m. to make breakfast for the family and clean up afterwards. Then I have nothing to do between breakfast and the time when I begin to make dinner. I have no friends here in Tianjin," she said.

Across the country, there are many senior citizens in Feng's position, leaving their hometowns for the cities where their children live and work in order to take care of their grandchildren. For most, this necessitates adaptation to a new environment.

Inadaptability 

Also three years ago, a 72-year-old man from Shandong Province, surnamed Yu, joined his wife in moving to Beijing to look after their granddaughter.

There are approximately 10 other seniors in Yu's neighborhood who often take their grandchildren to play together outside their buildings. They are Yu and his wife's only social circle in Beijing.

Many times, the couple had wanted to ask their son to hire a nanny so that they could return to their hometown but thinking of the financial pressure on their children if they did so and out of their love for their granddaughter, they gave up on the thought.

Differences in dialects, lifestyles and customs can all lead to difficulties in socializing and inadaptability for senior migrants. Wu Aifang left Hunan Province in south China to look after her grandchild in the northern province of Hebei, close to Beijing. Wu finds it difficult to make friends there as she speaks a local Hunan dialect rather than standard Chinese. As those around her are unable to understand her, she has made no friends in the two years she has lived there.

Li Jianhua, a 63-year-old grandmother in Beijing, used to live in a large apartment in her hometown; but sharing a small apartment with her daughter's family, Li said she finds it difficult even to turn around in the tiny kitchen, which makes her often feel upset.

Yi Qiong, a 58-year-old in Tianjin, said she would have been happy to see her grandchild grow up but the disagreements between her and her daughter on childrearing methods sometimes result in arguments.

A larger problem facing senior migrants stems from their inability to access the same social welfare as locals in the new city.

Dou Shuofeng, a retiree from Shandong Province who looks after her grandchildren in Beijing, has high blood pressure and needs to take medication every day. However, if she goes to hospitals in Beijing to fill her prescription, she can't get reimbursement from medical insurance. To save money, she needs to stock up on her medications whenever she returns to her hometown. "As there is a limit on the amount of medication one hospital can prescribe, I have to visit several hospitals to get the amount I need," she told Beijing Review.

Since 2016, the government has rolled out policies to create an interprovincial medical insurance system in pilot provinces and municipalities. However, in reality, there are still many problems that need to be solved, including the complicated procedures for applying for medical treatment in a different city.

In addition to medical care, senior migrants are also often ineligible for other community aged care public services and benefits their local counterparts enjoy, such as old-age stipends or subsidies.

According to a thesis published last June in the Beijing-based journal Social Security Studies, this inadequate access to local social welfare often prevents migrant seniors from developing a sense of belonging to and identification with their adopted city. 

Weal and woe 

The social inadaptability of migrant seniors can lead to psychological problems. According to a survey of 976 grandparents who take care of their grandchildren in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, published in the Health Research journal in December last year, 22 percent of these grandparents had psychological problems related to their current circumstances. Over 60 percent of the grandparents surveyed were migrants.

The survey suggested that grandparents spent most of their time looking after their grandchildren, which reduced the time they spent with other people and increased their sense of loneliness.

The research also found that more financially capable families were able to reduce pressure placed on grandparents by hiring nannies and subscribing to other household services. This resulted in improvements in grandparents' satisfaction with their lives and reduced their level of depression. The research found that nearly half of grandparents spent 7 to 12 hours a day engaged in childcare activities, leading to them ignoring their own health and therefore affecting their physical and psychological wellbeing.

Despite the challenges they face, seniors do provide valuable assistance to younger couples in their families. Whether grandparents are able to assist in childcare has also become an important factor affecting women's willingness to have children.

According to a paper based on an analysis of 4,839 families, published in the Beijing-based Economic Research Journal in June last year, the culture of having grandparents look after children has a positive impact on a family's fertility rate. Families where children are mostly taken care of by grandparents have 0.228 more child than others on average.

Hu Yangwu, a deputy to the Zhejiang Provincial People's Congress and a senior engineer with the Wenzhou Institute of Industry and Science, suggested encouraging more grandparents to migrate to their children's cities of work as a way to encourage young couples to have children. Hu's suggestion included relevant government departments providing social and medical insurance, as well as public services to these senior migrants to enable them to enjoy the same social benefits as locals. He also suggested they be given rental subsidies. 

Li Ling, a professor at Peking University's National School of Development, said since the universal two-child policy was introduced in 2015, grandparents have been under mounting childcare pressure. She suggested increasing fiscal spending on childcare services to provide more affordable care. "Inclusive childcare service systems should be developed to reduce senior people's childcare burden," she said.

Sun Hui, head of Shanghai Open University's Department of Management, suggested establishing a unified national database for patients' medical information, which would streamline the process and improve the efficiency of hospital visits away from where the patients normally live.

Communities are also expected to play an important role in migrant seniors' assimilation into local societies. According to a document published by the National Health Commission and the National Working Committee on Aging in 2020, China will build 5,000 demonstrative elderly friendly communities by 2025 to improve senior people's living environment, improve the quality of services they receive and increase their social participation.  

(Printed edition title: Building a New Life) 

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson 

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