【英语生活】中国城市老人的镀金生活 A tough start in life has led to a gilded retirement for China’s elders

Sixty became the new 40 in the west a while ago — but I never thought I’d see that day in China.NB VIDEO NEEDS TO ACCOMPANY THIS NOTEBOOK

The mainland’s sixtysomethings have led a more harrowing life than the average Botoxed Baby Boomer. When they were little, Mao Zedong gave them the Great Leap Forward and a famine that killed millions; when they were teens, there was the Cultural Revolution. Famine, revolution and political pogroms do tend to age one so.

But 30 years of prosperity later, China’s elders seem to be ready to relive the youth they never had — and to spend money on it. They aren’t all sitting around hoarding their renminbi and meddling in the lives of their children, as the conventional wisdom has it. Urban middle-class seniors are taking up sports such as hiking, biking and “square dancing”, in addition to more traditional pursuits such as taichi, mah-jong and minding other’s people’s business.

Paradoxically, it is the same Communist party that took away their youth that is giving them the time, the money and the financial freedom to enjoy their dotage. City-dwelling mainlanders retire frightfully young (as early as 55 for men and 45 for women), enjoy an ample pension (unlike rural contemporaries) and own valuable homes that were practically given to them when Beijing privatised the urban housing stock at the end of the last century.

It’s been described as the biggest ever one-off transfer of wealth, and it fell right into the lap of today’s 60-plus hikers, bikers and square dancers — people such as the sprightly old geezers in Shanghai’s Ruijin Sub-district Cycling Club. They dress up in skin-tight neon and Lycra for weekend cycling excursions that are rarely shorter than 100km a day.

Five years ago, the club rode all the way to Inner Mongolia, a 29-day trip towards the northern border. The oldest cyclist was 74: he bought his septuagenarian wife a Rmb4,000 ($670) model for the trip, but himself rode a one-speed push bike — a maicaiche, or “buying-vegetables bike” — for the whole 1,700km journey.

I fit right into the club’s demographic, and I also ride a maicaiche, but there all similarity ends: when I and a Financial Times colleague in her 20s joined the old birds for an outing one recent spring weekend, they had to cut the distance to a measly 15km just so we didn’t drop dead on them en route.

It was 7am on a Sunday, and everyone we rode past on our way to a suburban park seemed elderly and irritatingly vigorous: there were old people doing taichi; old people working out on the outdoor cross trainers one sees in every Shanghai neighbourhood; even old people taking their caged birds for a walk. By comparison, youngsters are couch potatoes (not having had decades of deprivation, economic and social dislocation to toughen them up).

The elders are maddeningly cheerful to boot: it seems they have spent a lifetime “eating bitterness”, as the Chinese saying goes, and are now ready to spit it out.

Yang Jianhua, 71, is a pint-sized former factory worker bursting with a rather exhausting amount of joie de vivre: gesticulating wildly and leaping about, she lists all the things Chinese old people can do to keep busy, from singing to dancing to art to piano. Lin Xuejun, 66, is one of her cycling mates: he was previously a senior executive at a state-owned enterprise and, when he retired five years ago, he felt the weight of time on his hands. But now he cycles every weekend, swims for an hour every day and takes two long walks every day. With his neon cycling shirt, Lycra trousers and wraparound shades, he should consider a second career as a geriatric sports model. “We prefer to spend money on biking equipment than on medicine,” he says.

And these days, the senior buck is a powerful force in the Chinese economy, says Matthew Crabbe, retail analyst at Mintel, who points out that there are enough over-60s to populate the UK, Italy, France and Germany combined. They have disposable income, they like to try new things — and they don’t just want nappies and baby food, he says.

There’s a whole generation of Mao-toughened elders just getting into the swing of spending on themselves. And with the start they had in life — they could live for decades.

“60岁是新的40岁”——这是西方不久前才兴起的现象，但是我从没想过中国也会有这一天。

比起西方婴儿潮时期出生的通过打肉毒杆菌保持容颜的同龄人，中国内地上了60岁的人在年轻时所过的生活要悲惨得多。在他们小时候，毛泽东让他们经历了“大跃进”和一场造成数百万人死亡的大饥荒；等他们到了青少年时期，又迎来了文化大革命。饥荒、革命、政治迫害往往使人更易老。

但是，在经历了30年的经济繁荣后，中国的老年人似乎已经准备好重温他们从未拥有过的青春——并且为此花钱。与传统观念迥异，他们并不全都是整日闲坐，捂着积蓄不花，热衷干涉子女生活。除了传统的太极拳、麻将以及家长里短之外，城市中产阶层的老人如今喜欢徒步、骑行、“广场舞”等各种运动。

矛盾的是，当初夺走他们青春的中共如今又给了他们时间、金钱以及经济自由去享受暮年生活。内地城市居民比较早退休（男性最早可在55岁退休、女性最早可在45岁退休），有足够的养老金（与农村同龄人不同）和属于自己的如今价值不菲的房产——上世纪末中国推行城市住宅私有化，当时这些房子几乎是给他们的。

这被称为“史上最大的一次性财富转移”，而这种运气刚好落在了如今60多岁的这一代徒步、骑行以及广场舞爱好者的身上，比如上海瑞金街道骑行俱乐部那群精神矍铄的老家伙们。每到周末他们就穿上色彩鲜艳的紧身服外出骑行，一天的路程往往不下于100公里。

5年前，该俱乐部用了29天时间，一路骑行到内蒙古。当时年龄最高的骑行者已经74岁：他花4000元人民币（合670美元）给同样七十多岁的老伴买了一辆骑行车，而他自己则骑着单速自行车——或者叫“买菜车”——骑完了长达1700公里的整个行程。

我和这个俱乐部的成员年龄相当，而且我也骑着一辆买菜车，但我们的共性只有这些：时值春天，我和英国《金融时报》一名20多岁的女同事在一个周末加入老家伙们的行列出去骑行，为此他们不得不把行程缩短为15公里，这样才使我们没有在途中翘辫子。

那是周日早上7点，我们骑车去郊区的一个公园，我们在路上超过的似乎都是老人，他们一个个劲头十足：有的老人在打太极；有的老人在户外健身设施上锻炼——在上海的每个社区都可以看到这种健身器；甚至有老人提着鸟笼散步。相比之下，年轻人反而宅在家里（他们没有经历过长达几十年的贫困、经济和社会动荡的磨砺）。

这些老年人也快乐得让人恼怒：他们似乎花了一辈子时间“吃苦”，现在准备把苦吐出来。

71岁的杨建华（音译）长得小巧玲珑，退休前是工厂工人，她现在不知疲倦地享受着生活乐趣。她手舞足蹈地列举出中国老年人忙着做的各种事情，唱歌、跳舞、画画、弹钢琴，等等。66岁的林学军（音译）是跟她一起骑行的伙伴之一：他此前曾在一家国企担任高管，5年前退休时他感觉时间多得用不完。但现在，他每个周末都骑自行车，每天游泳1小时，每天长时间散步两次。他穿着骑行服、莱卡裤子，戴着面罩型墨镜，他应该考虑从事第二职业，做一个老年运动模特。他说：“我们愿意把钱花在购置骑行装备上，不愿意花在吃药上。”

咨询公司英敏特(Mintel)的零售业分析师马修?克拉布(Matthew Crabbe)表示，老年人消费已成为中国经济中一个强有力的因素。克拉布指出，中国60岁以上人口已抵得上英国、意大利、法国和德国的人口总和了。他说，这些人拥有可支配收入，喜欢尝试新事物——他们并不只想着尿布和婴儿食品。

中国有整整一代经过毛泽东时代磨砺的老年人，他们刚刚开始积极地在自己身上花钱。随着他们获得人生中的新起点，他们或许能够再活几十年。

译者/何黎