As the sun came out, Zhang Deli walked past the 72 rooms, paying attention to the unopened curtains on each side. Knocking on the door a few times, the response came out, and the people outside the house walked away with confidence.
The youngest people staying here are 60 years old and the oldest is 93 years old. For them, sleeping late is a rare thing, but accidents are not.
Here is the Inner Mongolia Wulanchabucha Right Former Qihua Village Happiness Hospital, 75-year-old Zhang Deli is the dean and the first person to stay. Since 2012, poor elderly people living in remote areas around the country who have no one to take care of them have been taken to live here and "huddle" for the elderly.
This is the local government's exploration to solve the rural pension dilemma. In Ulanqab, the problem of population aging is more prominent. According to the communiqué of the seventh national census in 2021, the city's population aged 65 and over accounted for 20.81% of the permanent population, an increase of 10.21 percentage points compared with the sixth national census 10 years ago.
Since 2012, a total of 470 happiness homes have been built in Ulanqab, accepting more than 40,000 elderly people to concentrate on the elderly. In the qianqian banner of the right side alone, 6312 elderly people spent their old age in 38 happiness homes. They accompanied each other on the last part of their lives, planting vegetables, chatting, listening to plays, basking in the sun, and meeting aging.
On October 11, the exterior view of Hanamura Happiness Temple. Beijing News reporter Peng Chong photographed
"New Home"
In the village in the mountains, going out is either uphill or downhill. Young people work outside the village, and those who stay in the village are elderly people. More than 10 years ago, ox carts and horse-drawn carriages were the main means of transportation here, and many elderly people still lived in cracked and dangerous houses.
Locally, such villages are not uncommon. Wulanchabu is located in the central part of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and a local government data shows that "due to backward natural conditions, many mountainous areas, scattered villages, a large number of rural young and middle-aged people have been lost, and there are more left-behind elderly and poor elderly people." According to the communiqué of the sixth national census in 2010, the city's population aged 60 and over accounted for 15.95% of the permanent population, of which 10.6% were 65 years old and above, which marked that Ulanqab had entered the aging stage.
According to the survey at that time, about 1/3 of the rural elderly in Wulanchabu City lived in remote mountain villages, most of them were old, weak, sick and disabled poor people, which was the focus of poverty alleviation and old-age assistance in the city, and it was also a difficult point that needed to be solved urgently.
Since 2012, Wulanchabu has begun to explore a new model of rural old-age care, building mutual aid and happiness homes in all districts, counties and banners of the city, and inviting left-behind elderly people over 60 years old, empty nesters, elderly people who have lost their ability to work and poor elderly people to stay.
In May 2012, the Huacun Happiness Temple in Pingdiquan Town, Chayouqian Banner became one of the first happiness homes to be built. Zhang Deli, who was 66 years old at the time, was the first to check in. At that time, he was the chairman of the village committee of Dajingwa Village, living in an earthen house with his wife and children, and managing 40 acres of crop land.
"I am also older, and the lifestyle of young people is different, and I do not want to live in a building with my children, so it is better to live with the elderly and take care of each other." Zhang Deli watched the workers work for a summer, and after the courtyard was completed in September, he moved into the Flower Village Happiness Courtyard with bedding, clothes, pots and pans.
On the first day of moving in, he was the only one in the Happiness House. Zhang Deli was divided into a 42-square-meter brick and tile house, divided into two rooms inside and outside, clean and spacious. It's not unusual to have a stove and coal stove in the house, but 24-hour running water, electricity, flushing toilets and solar energy are new to him who has been living in the countryside, "the conditions here are the same as in the city, I haven't seen it before." ”
In the Happiness Courtyard, Zhang Deli went back and forth to familiarize himself with the "new home". In the courtyard, there are activity rooms, medical rooms, and on one side is a row of bungalows, sitting north and facing south, and there is a 60 square meter vegetable field in front of each room. Further inside, there is a vegetable cellar, a chicken coop... Outside the door, there is a road that can be opened to traffic, and later the road was widened and a bus stop was set up.
"There is no home, the Flower Village Happiness House has it, and it is free to live." During that time, the town's cadres painstakingly persuaded the eligible elderly to move in. The process was not smooth, the homeland was difficult to leave, and many villagers were accustomed to the life of a family and a courtyard, worried that they would not be able to adapt, and they could not give up the cattle, sheep and land at home.
"People don't believe there is such a good thing, and many people live in dangerous houses, and when they move over, the original house is going to tear down, and they resist." Zhu Xiaojun, secretary of the Huacun Village Committee, remembered that the cadres promised the villagers that if there were economic losses, they would give subsidies, and they also used buses to take the elderly to the Happiness Home to visit, or invited them to move in for a few months.
The old people's thinking is slowly changing. By November 2012, elderly people from nine villages, including Huacun and Tuchengzi, had moved in one after another.
On October 8, the elderly people of the Flower Village Happiness Home gathered to chat. Cha Right Qianqi Rong Media Center Di Ke photo
"Full staff"
In the spring of 2013, the Flower Village Happiness Home was "full". 116 elderly people are here and start the days of "hugging the group" for the elderly.
This group of people with an average age of more than 70 years old has a tacit lifestyle. They continued the cropper's routine, waking up naturally at five o'clock in the morning and walking for an hour in the courtyard at dawn. Eat early, the courtyard will be lively.
The volume of Hanamura peaks at ten o'clock. The mobile vending truck drove in, the horn shouted, and the people in the courtyard surrounded it, choosing hats and sweaters, and picking sweet potatoes and garlic. Old people gather in pairs in the sun, from the naughty past of childhood to the jokes when looking for objects. There are also people who like to go into the activity room, circle around the mahjong table, play mahjong, play chess, and the sound of "rattling" spreads out. Every once in a while, movies or duos would be put on the square, with mazas, wheelchairs, crutches, and one with their heads raised.
In the afternoon, the crowd prefers to gather in the vegetable patch in front of the house. Here are green onions, green peppers, cucumbers, rape, lettuce, a stubble can be eaten for several months. The rookie who just moved in in June this year loves the atmosphere. Her legs are not good, and when the neighbors take care of the vegetable field, they always help her plant and hoe the grass. "They are all old people, and they all know the difficulties of the elderly."
The Happiness Home does not have full-time service staff, and life depends on everyone helping each other. Seeing that the neighbor did not get up, he knocked on the door, afraid that the people in the house would have three long and two short. The family made delicious food, and the trees planted bore fruit and gave them to the neighbors to taste.
As soon as the National Day has passed, the frost period has arrived, and the vegetables in the field should also be harvested. In the past two days, 68-year-old Yao Runguo and his wife Wen Xiuhua are busy washing the freshly dug potatoes with water and preparing to make vermicelli. Although he was missing a few teeth and had gray hair, he still looked tough.
Compared with most people in the happiness house, Yao Runguo is indeed young, "Most of the old people here are in their 70s, and there are many people in their 80s, and that day I saw an old man in his 90s still picking up wood." Before moving in last year, the couple contracted out the family's 20 acres of land, although only the small piece of land in front of the door was left, and he did not slack off from sowing to harvesting.
Loneliness can easily be driven away. His children lived close by and often brought their noisy little grandchildren to visit. Some people's children live far away, they apply for WeChat, although they will not send messages, but they can receive work photos from their children in the "family group". Another person applied for the Kuaishou number and interacted with more than 5,000 fans, and the growth stories that their children did not like to hear, he told netizens over and over again in the live broadcast. Others found the other half of their lives together here, and the pictures of the two hung next to each other on the wall.
After the sun goes down, people return to their respective lamps to pick up their rice bowls. Put down the chopsticks and walk around a few more times, and the flower village should be quiet.
An old man in a room at the Hanamura Happiness Home on October 8. Courtesy of respondents
"Dumb and dumb"
On such days, people spent nearly ten years in the Flower Village Happiness House.
When Zhao Guiying, 69, moved in in 2012, he formed a song team with more than a dozen old ladies and danced to music in the square. But after two or three years, people slowly got together, and then later, no one could twist. This year, she is 78 years old.
In the first room of the second row on the south side, there lived an old man who was born deaf and dumb, 82 years old this year, almost no one knew his name was Li Genbao, and everyone called him "dumb". When I was young, I was hit by a car and left with sequelae, and it was difficult to walk. In 2012, he moved here with his second brother, Li Laibao.
In the first few years, he would also go out for a walk. Nowadays, people can't remember the last time he saw "Dumb" walk out the door, probably a few years ago, he held the root of the wall and walked under the sun by himself.
He never started a family and was cared for by his 88-year-old second brother. Every morning, when it was time for dinner, Li Laibao went to his brother's window, and if he saw him sleeping, he would come back later, after all, knocking on the door, knocking on the window, and shouting were useless. Sometimes it takes three or four runs before I meet my brother with his eyes open, so he quickly beckons. Dumb got up, opened the lock on the door, drew a circle or oval with a few fingers, and told his brother whether he wanted to eat bread or dumplings.
Three meals a day is a rare time for "dumb" people to have contact with people. After eating, the "dumb" lay down again, watching the sparrows pecking at the window outside, and a sheep that I don't know who bought it, pacing back and forth in the vegetable field.
Aging is approaching, and people lose control of their limbs little by little. The 75-year-old rookie Fen is becoming more and more anxious about this, and after an operation on lumbar spondylosis four years ago, her health is getting worse and worse, and her legs are getting number. Her wife died early, her children were busy working, and she lived alone.
4 months ago, when she found that she could no longer pick charcoal, she decided to move to the Happiness House. She didn't want to be cared for in a nursing home every day, and she didn't want to live with her children as a burden.
In the face of the elderly who are sick, Zhang Deli cannot help but take extra care, he will always sleep an hour later than the rookie Fen, so as not to let her fall ill in the middle of the night and be unattended. Every time he passed by the "dumb" door, he also had to look at it a few times, and when he had time, he would help him clean up the house, dry the quilt, and wipe the furniture.
After being elected as the president of the Happiness Hospital, Zhang Deli needed to take care of more trivial things: people burned firewood, cooked, smoked, and set off cannons, and he had to observe diligently to avoid a fire; the old couple in the family had to go to mediation because of "what to eat for lunch"; whoever had a home appliance that did not work and the lights were not lit, and the faucet was running out of water, Zhang Deli also had to repair it. "There's no contradiction here, and there's no need to reciprocate help."
On October 9, Zhang Deli, president of the Flower Village Happiness Institute, updated the household survey form. Beijing News reporter Peng Chong photographed
38 happiness homes
"Since the day I moved in, there have been 28 old people in the yard." Zhang Deli said.
Recently, Zhang Deli has been busy doing a thorough investigation of households. Once a year, he wants to update the information of the elderly in the happiness home, and those who have died, he must note on the list.
The year before, an old lady the same age as him, who had moved a small horse to sit outside, accidentally fell backwards and died unexpectedly. "It's normal, and 120 comes often." Some people were pulled away and came back here after a while, while others never came back. After the children packed up the things of the deceased old man, a week later, the new old man moved in.
In the Mid-Autumn Festival this year, Gao Ruxing and Wang Shuzhen moved in from Tuchengzi Village. Gao Ruxing, 68, has worked in other places for most of his life, and in the first two years, when he reached the age of "construction sites are not rare", he had no choice but to return to his hometown, and the old couple who had no house lived in the villagers' homes.
Some time ago, the Flower Village Happiness House vacated another house. Gao Ruxing and his wife spent 500 yuan to scrape a wall and moved in.
Like Gao Ruxing, the young people who flowed out of Ulanqab decades ago are beginning to get older. "In the city, the cost of living is high, many people want to come back, but the assets are given to the children, there is no house in the hometown, then where they live after they come back, the pension problem of these people, we are also exploring." Ren Jinsong, deputy director of the Propaganda Department of the Former Banner of the Right Front Banner, said.
The ageing process in Ulanqab is still accelerating. According to the communiqué of the seventh national census in 2021, the city's population aged 65 and over accounted for 20.81% of the permanent population, an increase of 10.21 percentage points compared with the sixth national census ten years ago.
The pace of government is also accelerating. From 2012 to the present, a total of 470 happiness homes have been built in the entire Ulanqab, realizing the centralized old-age care of more than 40,000 elderly people, including more than 24,466 low-income households, 5,967 poor households and 3,284 five-insured households. Under its jurisdiction, the ChayouQian Banner, using resources such as homes for the elderly, idle school buildings, factories, and old township government offices, has built 38 mutual aid and happiness homes in the past 9 years, realizing 3,787 households and 6,312 rural elderly people over the age of 60 in remote areas.
At present, the occupancy rate of Hanamura Happiness Home is 100%, "there is an elderly person who has passed away and vacated the room, we will review the applicant's conditions, and then approve the stay as soon as possible." Zhu Xiaojun said.
Ren Jinsong said that the mutual aid happiness home has effectively solved the problem of rural socialized old-age care. It not only provides the elderly with a free living space for centralized living and mutual care, but also conforms to the traditional home living habits in rural areas, improves their happiness index, and relieves the worries of the children of migrant workers. "In Ulanqab, we feel that this is a better rural pension model."
People in the Happiness House always come and go.
"Birth, old age, illness and death, the law of nature." Zhang Deli seemed to look very open, just like talking about an ordinary summer, which was the most vital season in the happiness house, every household planted flowers, there were Henna, there were calendulas, "red, pink, a big cluster, but it looks good." ”
Beijing News reporter Peng Chong
Edited by Li Ming