University for aged lets Chinese elderly enjoy retired life

JINAN, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Sun Baoping, 64, rushed to the elderly university for his last photography class of the semester, with the latest SLR camera in his hand.

Sun began studying at the elderly university in Anqiu City, east China's Shandong Province, eight years ago after he left his job at the local procuratorate.

"I wanted to find some decent hobby and learn a special skill," Sun said he didn't want to "waste his old age."

The Anqiu elderly university offers 30 courses, including dancing, Beijing Opera, vocal music, calligraphy and violin. Each course costs only 100 yuan (about 15.7 U.S. dollars) a semester. It is not a huge expense compared to the retirement fund of aged people.

There are more than 20 students in Sun's class. After years of study, he has changed his photographic equipment four times, using it to take pictures of flowers, trees, and his grandchild.

"Wherever I go, the camera comes with me." The 64-year-old man could now never leave his new friend.

China has 264 million people aged 60 years and above, accounting for 18.7 percent of its 1.4 billion population in total, according to the seventh population census conducted in 2020. The aged population was expected to surpass 300 million in five years.

Universities for the aged have changed the concept of many Chinese elderly people from "surviving old age" to "enjoying their old age."

"My retirement life was lit up by the elderly university," said Xin Jianrong, a 65-year-old retired worker.

Refusing to be constrained by babysitting her grandchildren in her later years, Xin began studying dancing and vocal music at the Anqiu elderly university ten years ago. "I want to find my passion," Xin told her family.

Xin has loved artistic performance since childhood but never had the opportunity to learn systematically. Now at university, she is often the first to arrive and the last to leave.

After class, Xin organized a troupe in the community to perform square dancing, a physical activity popular with middle-aged and retired women, who do natural movements to a musical accompaniment in open places in cities, aiming to spread her learning achievements at university.

Xin's husband, friends, and neighbors also joined the elderly university under her influence. Such appeal makes Xin into a "dancing advertisement."

Wang Yuzhen, vice president of the Anqiu elderly university, said there were only a few dozen students back in 2004 when the university was first established. Now there are nearly 2,000 students, among whom the oldest is 70.

The number of students at China's universities for the aged had exceeded 10.8 million by the end of 2019, according to the country's first report on education development of the elderly.

The report also showed that China had about 76,000 institutions providing education services for the elderly by the end of 2019.

"Aging is not terrible. What is terrible is to give up, stop stepping forward, and lose hope," students at the Anqiu elderly university often share with Wang.