Anne Zhang

    zhangy49@gmail.com

    WU RENYING, a 68-year-old woman, is worried about where she will spend her twilight years.

    Wu doesn’t have a bed at the Shenzhen Luohu Social Welfare Center even though she has been on the waitlist for five years. Time is running out, so she has started inquiring about private nursing homes. But their high prices and long distance from her children’s homes downtown have kept her away.

    “More than 2,000 senior citizens are on our waitlist. We had to set up some requirements to decide who can get a bed first when it’s available,” the center’s deputy director Chen Weiliang told Shenzhen Daily.

    Located on Taining Road in Luohu District, the Luohu Social Welfare Center is the largest public nursing home for the elderly in the city, which houses about 360 elderly people with an average age of 85.

    The Shenzhen Social Welfare Center in Futian has about 130 senior residents. Most of them are healthy, which means applicants have to wait a long time for a vacancy, an employee surnamed Ma said. She added that the center canceled its waitlist system years ago because of the high number of applicants and low bed rotation rate.

    In contrast, many private nursing homes are far from full. Shenzhen Shenci Nursing Home in Longhua New Area, for example, has 116 beds, but it only houses 53 people. Renda Benevolence Nursing Home in Bao’an District, which provides upmarket services, has 800 beds and plans to add 2,000 after the second phase of its construction is complete, but only about 400 people are currently living there.

    The reasons for the stark contrast between public and private nursing home enrollment are location, cost and credibility. Unlike public nursing homes downtown, most private nursing homes are located in the city’s outskirts. Many elderly people are unwilling to stay in these inconvenient locations because they believe they have inadequate support facilities, such as medical clinics.

    People tend to have more trust in public institutes than in private ones, said Zhang Yufan, deputy director of the nursing home at the Shenzhen Social Welfare Center.

    The costs differ hugely. Public nursing homes charge 1,500 yuan to 3,800 yuan (US$236-598) per month, depending on the health condition of a resident. The costs range from 1,680 yuan to 5,000 yuan a month at Shenci and from 2,900 yuan to 7,000 yuan a month at Renda. Shenzhen Nanlian Nursing Center, a high-end private nursing home that opened in May in Longgang District, charges from 2,000 yuan to 12,000 yuan a month for its personalized services.

    Despite the expensive fees, though, some private nursing homes have complained that running a nursing home in Shenzhen is a losing business because the initial investment is so enormous.

    The Shenzhen government offers a subsidy of 200 yuan a month for each bed in use to qualified nursing homes. Eligible private nursing homes can also apply for operating subsidies.

    Shenzhen Jingxiyang Nursing Home for the Aged has received more than 100,000 yuan in subsidies every year since its establishment in 2002, but it was running at a loss for its first five years, said Xu Yanping, who is in charge of the facility’s marketing and operating.

    Renda, which opened in 2008, had less than 100 residents before October 2012 and had lost nearly 7 million yuan by the end of 2012, its’ deputy director Li Huaqi told Shenzhen Daily. Renda received a subsidy of 800,000 yuan last year.

    Although Shenci started receiving a yearly subsidy of about 70,000 yuan in 2012, an employee named Pan Lizhen said it’s costly to run a nursing home for old people. Her institution has a monthly rent of nearly 80,000 yuan and pays about 70,000 yuan a month to its nurses.

    The number of residents in Shenci began leveling out at about 50 last year after the Shenzhen government issued guidelines to improve and diversify the aging industry.

    Renda can now make ends meet after more elderly people moved in last year. In addition to the preferential policies, Li attributed the progress to a change in people’s traditional ideas about nursing homes.

    Many people thought it was not filial to send aged parents to a nursing home, but they now realize that nursing homes are a good option for their parents to spend their graying days, Li said.

    Operators of private nursing homes are positive about the industry’s future. Parents of China’s single-child generation are turning old, meaning that two children will have to take care of four elderly parents, Li said.

    “Nursing homes could be a good solution if the children don’t have the time and energy to care for their parents,” he said.

    The aging industry will boom when the single-child generation grows old, Pan said. “This generation will receive enough pensions to pay for nursing services when they retire,” she added.