Source of this article: Time Weekly Author: Guo Zihao
Li Heng, 25, never thought that he would be so anxious because of his parents' pension problems.
His mother constantly hinted on the phone that he hurry back to his hometown in Hunan; his aunt arranged blind dates and jobs for him without permission, talking about how it was not easy for his parents... As soon as relatives in their hometown met, they advised, "Young people still have to stay with their parents and do their filial piety to the elderly."
In the eyes of outsiders, Li Heng is a proper and excellent youth. One of the few famous college students in the village; he settled in Guangzhou three years after graduation, earning more than 20,000 a month and working steadily; he recently talked about a girlfriend.
"Do you have to sacrifice your own life for the sake of filial piety?" Li Heng has repeatedly and explicitly refused the request of his family, but at the same time, anxiety has been continuously amplified, blocked in the throat and stuck in the heart, reminding him every moment that the excellent youth in the eyes of outsiders is actually the "unworthy" in the family population.
In Douban's one-child pension exchange group, many young people who have suffered pension anxiety like Li Heng have gathered. Every night, more than 70,000 people chant here: What if my mother is fooled into buying health care products, but she is completely persuaded? What should parents who want to study abroad but can't rest assured about their hometown? My father is sick and bedridden, should he quit his job and go back to care?
Marriage, children, mortgages, jobs... Every anxiety is enough to keep young people in trouble. Parents' pension was originally ranked at the end of this anxiety list, but as the first batch of post-90s parents entered the 5-word head, its visibility is constantly rising.
Compared with the post-70s and post-80s, the post-90s generation is a generation with a strong sense of self. For them, self-pleasure and self-satisfaction are far more important than being a filial piety. Seeing their parents getting older and seeing their parents completely sacrificing their lives to take care of the elderly, the fear of the post-90s generation for the elderly suddenly emerged.
According to the data of the seventh national census, 18.7% of China's population aged 60 and above accounts for 18.7%, and the population size exceeds 260 million. For the post-90s generation, the early arrival of pension anxiety is both a real stress test and an emotional projection of early arrival: In the future, what should I do when I am old?
Stranded escape plans
After countless nights of struggle, Li Heng made an escape plan: he decided to disappear and leave his parents' sight.
Before this, Li Heng's life was always drawn in a circle with his parents as the radius: when filling out the university volunteer, his mother directly listed a list of school choices for him, all in Hunan Province or surrounding provinces; after graduation, his father tried to ask him to return to his hometown to become a civil servant. Now, Li Heng just wants to tear off this existence called "home" with all his might.
Quit a stable job, sell the apartment you just bought, carry your luggage around the country, go crazy, and your first stop is in Dali, Yunnan. Li Heng wrote the plan in his diary, waiting for him to take the first step. "People should first take responsibility for their own lives, not pay for other people's emotions." Even in the most intimate relationship, there is no such obligation. ”
But the escape plan was completely changed by an accident.
In June 2020, a sudden car accident turned my father into a vegetative state. Li Heng rushed back to his hometown for two months, taking care of his parents, and occasionally feeding pigs and going to the ground. More often, he lost sleep all night and watched the sun the next morning in a daze.
Leaving the 996 and the high-rise buildings of the big factory, Li Heng felt more suffocated. Mother's complaints came more frequently and violently than usual, "I blame you, if you come back early, your father will not have an accident." Li Heng dropped the bowl and left.
Burdened with his mother's accusations, Li Heng chose to talk to his father, who was lying in a hospital bed. It's like rushing into a bottomless cave, in an empty hospital room, only your own voice is echoing.
"This feeling of helplessness cannot be clearly explained to outsiders." Bearing the cost of nearly 30,000 yuan per month for treatment, Li Hengkali's savings are getting smaller and smaller, and his efforts over the past few years have all been adrift; the mother has become extremely sensitive, and has rarely spoken except to take care of her father and complain about her son.
Because the bank card was almost overdrawn, Li Heng had to open a fundraising app. When pictures of skinny old people with ventilators inserted in them appeared in front of him, Li Heng's anxiety instantly overflowed the screen. He never imagined that one day, a picture of his father would also appear on a crowdfunding app.
The 58-year-old mother is also increasingly dependent on Li Heng. "Like a child, I have to accompany you even to buy a dish." This is not the tough mother that Li Heng remembers. Li Heng realized that because of his father's car accident, his mother was also accelerating her aging.
dazed. Except for dazedness, Li Heng could not come up with any other solution. How did parents, who were once in their prime, get old in an instant? The father has fallen, what if the mother encounters a similar situation again? Do you want to quit your favorite job and go home to take care of your parents? Will I experience this and become particularly vulnerable when I get older?
The anxiety of the elderly who arrived ahead of time flooded li Heng's head like a fierce tide.
Sending to a nursing home is "a sin"
In January, his father, who was lying in a hospital bed, woke up, which should have been a celebration, but Li Heng and his mother fell back into the deep valley. Because of the brain injury, the father was diagnosed with alzheimer's syndrome (commonly known as "Alzheimer's disease") in the middle of the disease.
It's a disease that's enough to consume an entire family. Lu Xiaoya, a veteran media person, accompanied her mother with Alzheimer's disease for more than a decade, during which she wrote 35 diaries. In Lu Xiaoya's description, the mother could not recognize who the person in front of her was in the late stage of the disease, and even the expression became difficult to understand, but she still needed someone to accompany her. Otherwise, whether it is sunset or the light darkens, it will arouse a strong uneasiness in her heart, and can only be vented through noise, tantrums, and yelling.
"One person is incapacitated, the whole family is out of balance." The same happened to Li Heng's father. "He would lose his temper inexplicably, throw things, just to get the napkins on the table; sometimes, almost everyone was forgotten, and he would only call 'Juan'er Juan'er', which is his mother's nickname." His father "talked nonsense" all day, and Li Heng could only sit there blindly.
Once, Li Heng fell asleep reading a book beside his father. In the dream, "I left the ward for the first time, went to see my favorite movie, bought a comic that I hadn't followed for a long time, and shouted that I was finally free." When he woke up, the ground was littered with confetti—my father had torn the book.
"Obviously, it is a very ordinary wish, how can it be so difficult to achieve?" Li Heng wanted to go out to breathe, but his inner sense of morality immediately rushed up and asked, "That's your parents, do you really care?!" ”
Two months later, Li Heng decided to send his father to a nursing home.
Li Heng found the suburbs all the way from the city center, either too expensive or too far away. Eventually, he arranged for his father in an ordinary private nursing home in the old downtown. The price is still "close to the people", and the bed fee is 4,000 yuan per month. Coupled with the father's special situation, the monthly nursing fee rose to 2,000 yuan.
"Two people in the same room, the caregivers also look like they are in their 50s." At one point, Li Heng doubted whether these caregivers, who were almost the same age as his parents, could fulfill their duties. Elderly care for the elderly – As the aging level deepens, such a pension dilemma will become a daily routine for more and more Chinese families.
Even after sending his father to a nursing home, Li Heng still couldn't breathe.
"Sending my parents to a nursing home seemed like a sin to my mother." The mother angrily rebuked her son: "Hard work and pulling big, what is the use of raising you?!" "You send it, and I'll see how filial you are!"
Li Heng did not think of other ways. Would you like a babysitter? Interviewed for a few days, none of them were reassured; left to the mother to take care of? Worried about exhausting another. He even tried to bring his parents to live in Guangzhou, but the small 40-square-meter apartment suddenly seemed very cramped. "Such a small room can't put anything down", "It's too far from the subway entrance, you have to go far every time", every word that her mother casually said was like a knife stuck in Li Heng's heart.
Warm up in groups
After his father's accident, Li Heng developed a habit of looking at the balance of his bank card from time to time to calculate the upper limit of the surgery fee he could pay. He was glad he didn't have children yet, otherwise, "it would be another disaster."
Today, my father's monthly bed fee of 4,000 yuan plus 2,000 yuan of nursing fees, plus bits and pieces of food and beverages - nearly 8,000 yuan a month. It has reached the limit that Li Heng can bear.
He calculated that in the future, the monthly expenditure of the parents in the nursing home will be as high as 20,000 yuan, and there will be fixed pension insurance, medical insurance, and commercial insurance to be paid every month, "The annual expenditure is estimated to exceed 300,000 yuan, which is not what I can afford at all."
"Make money! Money! Money! "This is the only way that the post-90s generation can think of in the face of old-age anxiety." According to the survey results released by Gu Yu Data in 2019, at least 1 million yuan must be prepared for 20 years in a nursing home, of which the nursing home with the highest fee requires more than 60,000 yuan per month.
"I myself am all moonlight, how to provide for them!" It has become the cry of the post-90s generation from the bottom of their hearts. At the same time, the post-90s pension anxiety has added a new layer: "How should I retire in the future?" ”
In the real world, unattainable housing prices and fast-moving work pressures are driving young people toward low-desire groups, and the number of unmarried and Dink families is increasing. Coupled with the habit of "moonlight", how to spend their old age makes these young people feel afraid.
As a post-00s Miha recently launched a fund, she desperately needs money to alleviate the anxiety of the pension that has arrived early. "I'm not worried about my parents' pension, but I'm thinking about what to do when I'm old?"
As an unmarried person, Miha's fear of aging is natural. "No one calls an ambulance when you're sick", "No one knows after you die", "You don't even have the opportunity to talk to people" – Miha concludes: Such an old age is terrible.
The book "Bankruptcy after Aging" (edited by NHK Special Program Recording Group, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, August 2018 edition) describes the current situation of Japan's aging society: most elderly people are still working until the age of 70; without a partner and children, a serious illness can directly lead to bankruptcy; even if they die alone in an apartment, no one knows. "I didn't expect it to be such an old age." In the book, this sentence is repeatedly mentioned by different old people.
Li Heng and Miha decided to huddle together for warmth in advance.
On Douban, several "pension mutual aid" groups have been established. The members of the group are painters, convenience store clerks, high-paid white-collar workers, and everyone agrees to rent an elderly apartment on the outskirts of Beijing in the future to raise a family; in an app for celibace people, everyone comforts each other spiritually, discusses each other's favorite movies and books, and shares financial knowledge to increase savings...
On this day, Li Heng went to the nursing home to see his father. "My son is here." The father, in a wheelchair with silver hair and clapping his palms in celebration, was one of the few moments he could remember his son. Looking at his father, Li Heng felt that in this life, people will eventually return to their children and become a blank piece of paper.
(In the text, Li Heng and Miha are pseudonyms)