October 14th is the Chongyang Festival, a traditional Chinese festival. Whether it is ancient China or the world today, it is the simple and true wish of every citizen to make the elders at home healthy and happy. It is the mission of a country to provide every old person with security and support for the elderly.
However, in order to support the careers of their children and take care of their grandchildren, many elderly people wander from the countryside to strange cities like migratory birds.
In front of them, it was their hometown that they couldn’t go back to. Generally speaking, there are two reasons why the “Piao Lao” come to the city. One is that the old people come to the city with the idea of reducing the burden on their children and help take care of the next generation. The other is that after the children from rural areas set up their homes in the city, they brought their rural parents into the city to “enjoy the blessing” and take care of the third generation. In any case, they came to the city with care, more responsibility, taking care of their children’s lives, and organizing the third-generation daily life, so that they can only “homesick” and hardly “return home” in their daily busyness. The “Piao Lao” put the strong family concept in the bones of the Chinese and the current fast-paced social life on the stage, and they are also “trapped” in such entanglement.
However, the city did not easily open its doors to them. Behind them is a city that cannot be integrated into, and the drifting old people are facing more realistic problems.
On the one hand, the “Piao Lao” are not only separated from the old-age security system in the place of migration, but also derailed from the old-age service system of the household registration area. For example, Shanghai has a serious household registration dependence on the supply of old-age service. They are embarrassedly excluded by the standards of “local elderly residents” in some big cities, and their basic guarantees for daily life are greatly reduced. On the other hand, cities are not the first homeland of these old people. They grew up in the countryside, and their thinking and logic are rooted in traditional rural life. In the face of bizarre cities and unfamiliar environments, many “old people drifting” have problems in consumption concepts and making friends. Old friends who can be pulled out of the yard have been isolated by steel and cement, and social participation is involved. Decline, of course, the sense of identity decreases.
In this way, the “Piao Lao” are caught between the city and the country. The body is in the city and the soul is in the country. They neither belong to the city nor belong to the country. This is similar to the migrant workers, left-behind children, and empty-nest elderly who have been constantly mentioned in the past two years. They are all witnesses to the plight of urban and rural areas. The gap between urban and rural development has led to population mobility and family divisions, and the traditional family concept of “harmony” binds them together. The left is not the right, and it is naturally caught in a dilemma.
Elderly people who are over sixties are supposed to enjoy family happiness, but they have to endure the torture of being “trapped”. We have the responsibility and the obligation to stop embarrassing the “old people” who are caught between urban and rural areas.
We need to solve their worries instead of embarrassing the “old people”. On the one hand, Maslow’s demand theory puts forward that in addition to physiological needs, people have an urgent need for safety. Care will be taken to deal with the old-age security and medical security issues of the “Piao Lao”, so that the elderly can be “medicated for illness” and “provided for the elderly.” Remove the barriers between urban and rural areas, and make it easier to receive pensions in different places. On the other hand, there are also actions on spiritual protection, the establishment of a sound social elderly center, and related activities for the elderly within the community, calling on more elderly people to participate, so that the spirit of the “old people” is no longer “drifting.”
The old people have worked hard all their lives. Their wish is simple, but they are able to move their old legs, meet old friends, accompany their wives, children and grandchildren, and the reality of “the hometown that cannot be returned, the city that cannot be integrated” is so impressive. disappointment.
Let the policy be implemented, soak the care in the real place, and stop embarrassing the “old folks” caught in the urban and rural areas.
(Editor in charge: Deng Hao)