After Quake, China's Elderly Long for Family

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Picking Up the Pieces

China continues recovery efforts after a devastating 7.9-magnitude earthquake hit central China on May 12, 2008, and rendered millions of people homeless.

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"The whole cultural tradition of Confucianism is being hit by an old-age tsunami," said Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer and scholar with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "It was easy enough to imagine filial piety and veneration of older people when they were a scarce commodity, but they're becoming really plentiful, and in the eyes of many, perhaps even a burden."

The quake disaster has highlighted one of China's biggest demographic challenges. The country's three-decade-long family planning policies have helped reduce poverty, but also have contributed to a shrinking pool of children able to support their parents. There are more than 100 million Chinese over 65 today, a number that will approach a quarter of a billion by 2030, Eberstadt said, citing official data. In addition, the number of women over 60 with no sons, now about 10 to 15 percent of the population, is expected to grow to 30 percent of the population by 2025.

"China is going to be the poorest old society we've ever seen," Eberstadt said. "It's two bad forces coming together -- it's like a perfect storm."

Provincial and central government officials have promised that all elderly left homeless by the quake will be given food and shelter. Many have been moved to nearby rest homes. And officials say they plan to build more old-age homes over the next two years in Sichuan. But for the seniors who have banded together in the Leigu camp, nothing quite makes up for family.

Liu Tingjin, 82, who is blind, was left on a mountaintop near her home village of Xuanping by her 56-year-old son. Now, the youngest resident of Tent No. 50, vegetable farmer Jin Tongfen, 64, helps guide the older woman each day to an outdoor toilet several hundred yards away.

"Two or three days after the earthquake, my son carried me on his back to the peak of a hill near our village. The other villagers had set up tents there and most of our village was there," Liu said, swatting away flies as helicopters roared overhead. "Then he left me there, without saying a word. No goodbye, no explanation. He didn't even leave me a cent."

Villagers told her later that her son had taken his wife, partially paralyzed from before the earthquake, to a hospital in the city of Mianyang. But he never returned. "I can't find him. How can I not be worried? I miss him so much but he doesn't seem to miss me," Liu said. "Is there any use for me to miss him?"

Liu also has a daughter in nearby Anxian county. Both her children are farmers who are often away doing migrant work to supplement their incomes. They have cellphones, but Liu didn't have their numbers.

"Parents always think of their children, but children don't think of you," said Jin's husband, Chen Futing, 68, who cannot walk because of severe arthritis and who was carried out of his village by a soldier after the quake.

"Our situation is not easy," Chen said. "If you want to die, you can't. But if you want to live, it's so hard to carry on."

Liu said she spent three or four days on the mountain. When other villagers cooked, they shared their meals with her. One afternoon, a helicopter arrived to evacuate her to Leigu because a river blocked by a landslide was in danger of overflowing. Helicopters had come twice before, but no one told Liu that they were evacuating seniors.

"The soldiers looked after me. They carried me on their backs, but the other villagers and even my own children didn't look after me like that," Liu said.

In the camp, government officials asked for her family information. But so far, Liu's son and daughter haven't been located.

"Before the earthquake, my son didn't treat me well, but he didn't treat me badly. I had to do housework, for example, such as feeding the pigs, feeding the cows, mopping the floor," she said. "Right now, in this tent, when I'm hungry, I eat; when I feel sleepy, I lie down."

Liu's tent mates are hard-pressed to help because of their own illnesses.

"We're strangers, all of us in this tent. Although she would like to find other people from her village, she can't see anything, so it's really difficult," Chen said. "Since we don't know anyone from Xuanping, how can we help?"

His own son and four daughters are looking after themselves and their own young children in a makeshift tent in another county.

"In fact most old people have children, but many of the children go out to work. So in the end, it's the same for people who have children or don't have children," Chen said.

None of the people in the tent are bitter. They understand that their children don't have the means now to help them.

"Right now we can only depend on the government because children are unreliable," said Jin, Chen's wife. "My children said, 'We can barely take care of our own families, how can we take care of you?' But I'm not afraid. We are old enough. If I die, I won't have too many regrets."

Three weeks after the quake, Liu said, "my only complaint is I don't have clothes to change into. When I escaped from the earthquake, I was wearing this. I'm still wearing it."

Researcher Zhang Jie contributed to this report.