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Spending Those Later Years in Happiness: A report on the happy life of the senior in Lhasa

(People's Daily Online)    15:59, May 26, 2014
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Inside a whitewashed room of about 25 m2 there are a Tibetan wooden bed illuminated by a pleasant pool of sunlight coming in through a large window that has a neatly folded quilt on it, a Tibetan cupboard on the right side of the room on which some butter lamps are arranged in a row, and some incense sticks giving off waves of the unique ancient Tibetan fragrance. This is the new home of a senior resident called Ga'se at Maizhokunggar County's sanatorium.

Old Ga'se is very glad to be visited and immediately offer us some sweet tea and fruit. Then Ga'se tells us his life at a senior age at the sanatorium over cups of tea.

We learn from his telling that Ga'se is a 74-year-old native of Maizhokunggar County, his wife died 10 years ago, and has no children to take care of him. Considering his senior age and no children to his name, the county's Civil Affairs Bureau decided to send him to the sanatorium, only to be provided for and taken care of by nursing professionals free of charge.

According to Ga'se, he has lived through the dark days of Tibet. He worked as a hard laborer when he was young, unable to fill his stomach with food or cover his body with clothes throughout the year. It was far beyond his wildest dreams that when he was old and helpless indeed he would be cared for by a group of caring people not related by blood to him in any way.

Ga'se tells us that every year the sanatorium will provide him and his fellow seniors with custom-made Tibetan clothes and buy them various sorts of daily necessities including shoes and socks. Whenever a festival or holiday comes, the government will send people here to celebrate it with the senior residents of the sanatorium. To make them happy, the sanatorium often organizes various kinds of recreational activities, and maintains a greenhouse facility so that the seniors may participate in vegetable cultivation for fun. "It is much pleasant to live here than to stay at home. I really appreciate what the government has done for our senior people without sufficient means," Ga'se says.

According to vice director of Maizhokunggar County's Civil Affairs Bureau Dawa, the county now has 1 sanatorium and 2 township-level nursing homes, all of which operate according to the prefecture-level city's requirements for nursing homes to such an extent that they each are well equipped, boast a pleasant environment, employ a standardized management system, and offer a full range of services. These nursing facilities operate to make sure that all seniors may fully enjoy themselves and spend their remaining years in happiness. Moreover, on top of the level set by the prefecture-level city's system for allocating funds to those without sufficient means, the county has added RMB10 to each person deemed as having no sufficient means, thus raising the per capita subsidy to RMB660.

In short, the social welfare system for the unsupported senior of the prefecture-level city or even of the entire Tibetan region is to ensure that no senior without sufficient means will be left unsupported or not taken care of. Since 2007, the city of Lhasa has treated the construction of nursing homes and facilities as a major welfare program by investing more than RMB90 million over the years in the construction and expansion of a total of 37 rural nursing homes. At present, there are 43 nursing homes in Lhasa, every of which in addition to rooms in which seniors may live has rooms for other nursing home-related activities, including general activities participated in by the seniors, medical services, eating, and cooking.


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(Editor:Liang Jun、Huang Jin)

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