Seniors seeking high-quality retirement

He Yongnai, known as Chef Ho in New York for more than three decades, no longer cooks in a Chinese restaurant. Instead, he prepares meals for himself and his wife at his home kitchen in Shanghai.

The 82-year-old, who migrated to the United States in 1969, settled in Shanghai, near his home province of Zhejiang, two years ago in a continued care retirement community, where the couple bought a two-bedroom apartment.

"I was eager to return to China for my twilight years, and such a retirement community makes my dream of both living independently and being partly taken care of come true," said He, whose siblings live in Shanghai and children are in the US.

He said he would never choose a traditional nursing home where "the elderly stay in bed most of the time and their main task is to wait for meals".

"Here, we have very diversified activities and I have a kitchen in which to make and cook food by myself. We can go out freely anytime," said He.

Like He, a rising number of seniors enjoy better health, educational backgrounds, activity levels, spending power and a willingness to live apart from their children. And this prompts them to choose high-quality communities such as these, mainly in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, to live out their retirements.

Teng Jiaqi, vice-president and strategic investment general manager at Fosun Integrated Care Group, said more than 8,000 apartments in such communities had been introduced in Shanghai in the past two years.

"The figure is tiny compared with the entire real estate market, but we predict that there will be explosive growth soon," he said.

Seniors can either spend millions of yuan on buying an apartment in a continued care retirement community and pay a discounted service fee, or about 15,000 yuan ($2,200) for meals and service each month, industry insiders said.

Chen Yuyu is managing director of Starcastle Senior Living Investment and Operations Group, which operates the community that is home to He and his wife.

Chen said developments in the retirement community market in recent years have been similar to those in the hotel industry over the past two decades.

"We didn't have four- or five-star hotels back then ... we used to have guesthouses only. But now the hotel industry has matured as a result of market-based development," Chen said.

She said the development of continued care retirement communities will take less than two decades, as the population is aging fast. The number of people in China age 60 or older reached 241 million by the end of 2017, accounting for just over 17 percent of the total, compared with nearly 17 percent in 2016.

Reduced care ability

Shanghai has the country's highest proportion of elderly, accounting for 33.2 percent of the city's total, with 4.83 million residents age 60 or older, according to the latest official data. The number is forecast to reach 5.3 million by next year.

"People will get to know that there are retirement communities of varying size specializing in caring for different groups, such as the independent elderly or those who, for example, have Alzheimer's disease or mobility problems, and their interest will be aroused," Chen said.

Teng said other factors contributing to the increased need for such communities are the reduced ability to care for seniors owing to fewer children in a family compared with previous generations and the pursuit of quality living environments.

Apart from first-tier cities, these communities are also available in the Yangtze River Delta region, where people are more open to spending their retirement years away from home and have the finances that are required.

More than 2,000 apartments have been sold at an upscale community in Tieshan Temple Forest Park, Jiangsu province, since it was launched two years ago. More than 600 seniors have moved in. The community is a one-hour car journey from Nanjing, the provincial capital.

Hua Yan, assistant to the general manager at Nanjing Jinling Group Holdings, the main investor in the project, said the group is talking with partners and government departments in Lishui city, Zhejiang province, and Zhenjiang city, Jiangsu, to try to replicate this community model in those areas.

Chen said that when the group staged marketing campaigns for its two communities in 2013 and 2016, the age of clients showing an interest in them dropped from about 80 to 60 or 70.

"People are taking the price into account and making preparations earlier for their retirement years after becoming aware of the lack of high-quality resources," she said.

Hu Xingjuan, 81, and her 83-year-old husband have lived in an upscale community in Shanghai for a year. She said she is satisfied with the service and plans to live there for the rest of her life.

"We can request escorts, and trips to hospitals are prioritized," said Hu, a retired teacher, adding that she feels relaxed, as she no longer has to shop for groceries each day, do the cooking and housekeeping.

Hu said seniors are taken to museums and parks and even the most popular restaurants by activity coordinators at the community.

Yu Qiwen, 81, who has bought a 103-square-meter apartment in another retirement community in Shanghai, said life there is better than at home, where she employed a carer.

"The carer has her own family, so she could not be with me the whole year round, and sometimes I could not deal with her emotional ups and downs," said Yu, a former physician, whose husband died 10 years ago and whose son's family has settled abroad.

"Here, I am cared for by a group with a clear division of work, including a housekeeper with experience of working in a hotel, and health and medical care staff members. Their service is nonstop throughout the year," she said.

Chen, from Starcastle, said its philosophy is to extend the time in which seniors can live independently for as long as possible. As a result, meals are not delivered to their rooms and carers do not do laundry for them.

"If the elderly can walk, eat and take a shower by themselves, that makes them happy in retirement," she said.

Learning encouraged

Teng, from Fosun Integrated Care Group, said another reason for the rapid development of high-quality retirement communities is that they pay more attention to seniors' desire to keep an open mind to the changing world around them and to continue exploring it.

Chen Xingyan, president of NEY International Investment Group, which operates Evergreen Homeland, a retirement community in Shanghai, said, "We encourage seniors to keep learning, which can serve as a prop in life to improve resilience to stress and unforeseeable changes."

Many of the communities offer seniors classes in various subjects, including calligraphy, dancing, piano and ball games.

Yuan Naizhong, 75, who has lived in a community in Shanghai for nearly two years, has organized his fellow residents to give regular talks about their careers.

"We have a well-known director, an academician in the aerospace field, a former chief engineer of a nuclear power station and a retired senior judge among us. We are very happy that we can gather together and share our experiences and wisdom in life," said Yuan, who was a journalist before retirement.

Xu Haoxing, 93, who lives in a Starcastle community, said, "I have two things that I am proud of in my retirement. I did a skydive when I was 70 and I visited Hawaii, a trip organized by the community, when I was 90."