When Liu was in high school, he participated in a group poetry recital at the Great Hall of the People. An old classmate who also attended the Great Hall recital dropped in one day to the Xingguangyuan Senior Day Care Center. The two put on a recital for old times' sake and also taught a few joint classes.

Based on Liu's recital class, the Beijing Zhanyun Art Troupe was established, which boasts 20-plus permanent members including retired teachers, editors and office clerks. The troupe and the Voice of Youth Seniors Poetry Recitation Study Society jointly hold various activities. They often put on performances for schools and other institutions and sometimes even give impromptu performances in the street or on public squares. No one is paid – performing is reward enough.

With the growing popularity of recitation and elocution classes among seniors, the number of performing societies has ballooned. The Zhanyun Art Troupe took the initiative to form a federation, which now has more than 20 member-societies. These groups carry out exchanges and jointly put on performances, and even have a "most enthusiastic" award for particularly motivated performers.

These groups recite their own as well as other people's works, and claim significant creative talent in their midst. Back in the Baiwanzhuang complex's social center, a collection of 30 poems was released last year, all of which represent original contributions by the community's elderly members.

Liu says many retirees at Baiwanzhuang have former colleagues and friends in other cities around China, and the recitation group calls on these connections to help organize occasional self-funded road trips. This year plans are in place to go to Qingdao and even Xinjiang, thousands of kilometers from Beijing. Also in the works for this year, Liu says, is the launching of a website as well as inviting a famous director to give performance lessons.

Aside from recitation, Liu is also a consummate artist specializing in engravings, using recycled aluminium cans as "pigments" to create composite "paintings." As testament to his enduring dynamism, he opened an art gallery at home exhibiting his works, many of which carry the theme of environmental protection. In late 2009 as the World Climate Conference was being held in Copenhagen, he was interviewed by dozens of domestic and foreign journalists about his art gallery and his views on conservation. A reporter from Denmark told his story at the climate conference and documented this inspiring Chinese senior living an environmentally friendly existence.

The photography class is the biggest of the five classes at the Xingguangyuan Senior Daycare Center. It has 50 attendees.

When the class first started, lectures about general photography skills were given. Attendees subsequently began test shootings and the teacher would correct their technique. Finally, they started heading out into the suburbs to get the perfect shot.

Care from Everywhere

Feng Yuanji, 82, is another resident of the West Baiwanzhuang Community Complex. He fetches his lunch from the day care center every day and says the dishes are good value for money.

Feng has gone through two operations to treat his cancer, and his wife is also suffering from hypertension, hyperlipidemia and high blood sugar. "We're not well enough for many of the social activities. At the moment we mainly stay at home. Our son is middle-aged, quite busy, and only visits us at weekends. But we understand his situation. We once thought of hiring a carer, but she demanded a separate room and a TV set, and we didn't have the space or the money for that. But we make do with occasional help from the neighbors, and the lunch provided by the day care center and the government-issued coupons have been a big help," Feng says.

Since 2010, senior citizens over 80 in Beijing have been entitled to a monthly coupon worth RMB 100, which they can use in designated restaurants, barber shops, household service centers and other neighborhood businesses. Beijing alone issued RMB 4.3 billion worth of coupons in the policy's first year, and 15,000 enterprises have been designated as official service providers.

The Feng couple often takes public buses to nearby parks for relaxing strolls. For them, the buses and the parks are all free. Again since 2010, the Beijing municipal government has been issuing preferential treatment cards to elderly citizens over 65, allowing them to take 969 bus routes and visit 1,782 Class-A scenic spots in Beijing, all free of charge. Over 140 million visits are made by Beijing seniors under this program every year.

As part of its services provided to the community, the Zhanlanlu Community Center also periodically sends staff members to visit elderly residents to enquire about their needs. Based on their findings, they then recruit social workers, volunteers and college students to go about addressing these needs. For example, students from nearby Beijing Jiaotong University voluntarily provide services like reading books and newspapers aloud and chatting with the old folks in the West Baiwanzhuang Community Complex once every week or two. According to the service center, this and other volunteer services deliver door-to-door care to 70 to 80 percent of seniors in the community.

More active retirees are also known to call on and help their less active counterparts. In the Xinhua Community Complex of Zhanlanlu Subdistrict, for example, nine retirees formed a volunteer team, which visits and helps 145 "empty-nest" seniors in the community. They accompany people on visits to the doctor, wash bedclothes and help with buying groceries, for all of which less-able residents are very grateful. According to Hu Junjie, director of the Xinhua Community Neighborhood Committee, retirees living alone need spiritual comfort and warmth. In response to this, a "soul home" was opened in their community, in which seniors are encouraged to chat and share their feelings.

A Long Way Ahead

This year, there are plans to establish social care centers for seniors in all community complexes in Beijing. But with the average age of seniors on the up, the number of those losing the ability to care for themselves is also increasing. Special care and nursing services will need to be bolstered.

The care center in Liufang Nanli in Chaoyang District, Beijing specializes in providing services for seniors who have lost all or some of the ability to look after themselves. The center charges RMB 820 monthly for membership and provides services such as massage, medication, physical monitoring and meals.

Medical workers in Liufang Nanli have all received special training and hold certificates issued by medical authorities. Despite its excellent services it has one big drawback – with only five beds, it is far from meeting the mounting needs of seniors in the community.

To bolster community care, in the coming three years the Beijing municipal government will recruit and train 10,000 middle-aged unemployed as social workers to provide door-to-door or center-based nursing services to the elderly and disabled.

Currently, most community service centers only cater for relatively healthy seniors, and cannot meet the needs of the less healthy. Even the layout of community complexes and buildings don't take into consideration their special physical and psychological needs. Existing community care centers lack sound management systems and provide limited service items that fall far short of the needs of their target consumers.

Liu Lifeng, a research fellow with the Investment Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, points out that apart from providing services related to daily life needs, community service centers should cover high-level services like psychological consultation, home nursing and medical treatment and recuperation.

It is imperative that existing day care centers in community complexes improve their services for elderly residents. Wang Fu-xian, director of the Education Research Institute at Chongqing's Social Work Vocational College, gives the following suggestion for the development of social services for the elderly: services should not be viewed as a small-scale charitable activity, but rather developed into an industry in which the government should encourage investment and support. A highly specialized senior service system in communities with improved management, standardized operating rules and adequate regulation is needed in China.

Based on extensive research and practical considerations, a specially designed retiree village with a full range of facilities recently opened its gates. Beijing Sun City, located in Xiaotangshan in Beijing's Changping District, is large – its buildings occupy 180,000 square meters and its land a further 420,000 square meters. Within the community there are specially designed residences and apartments as well as six centers catering to residents' needs, such as medical care and leisure activities.

China is set to face the strains of an aging society in this century, but it is not too late to start implementing greater numbers of services and broadening community care to ensure its senior citizens continue to enjoy life into their twilight years.