Last month, two days before the Double Ninth Festival, a traditional Chinese occasion honoring senior citizens on the ninth day of the ninth month in the lunar calendar, an exhibition of caricature works themed on the life of the elderly people was launched at an elderly care service center of Shangxi town, Yiwu city of Zhejiang province.
Most of the works come from a national competition organized by the local government. From Aug 10 to Sept 15, the competition received more than 870 caricature works submitted by contestants, young and old, from around the country.
In various forms, including caricature, comic strip, paper-cutting and painted sculpture, these works feature the interesting moments in elderly people's lives in a care center or the vision of smart care in a humorous fashion.
The exhibition presents the 10 top works and 40 outstanding ones from all the submitted works, in addition to 38 others.
"This exhibition is not only a visual feast, but a profound conversation, which aims to call for people's support and participation in the care of the elderly, promote the development of the silver economy and let the senior citizens enjoy a happy life," writes Xu Jiazeng, president of the Zhejiang Elderly Service Industry Association, in a preface for the event.
The elderly at the care center appreciate their artwork. [Photo provided to China Daily]
At the exhibition, a painted sculpture titled Dragon Dance, Drum Rhythms, and the Red Sunset attracted a lot of attention. Made of ultralight clay, the work vividly captures the moment when elderly people in splendid attire perform a dragon dance and play drums.
"In communities, such a happy scene is often seen. I myself would join them, so I want to use this work to show the healthy life and spirited state of the senior citizens," says the submitter Zhu Guohong, a teacher at Yiwu Urban Vocational School, who spent two weeks completing the work together with her students. The work won third prize.
A cartoon work titled A Full-Time Nanny Watcher depicts a scene where a gray-haired grandmother is monitoring a nanny who is feeding her grandson. The author Zhao Xuefeng, in his 70s, explained his cartoon, saying that busy with work, young parents hire a nanny to take care of their kid. To avoid burdening their own parents, they install surveillance cameras at home to monitor the nanny. Consequently, the grandparents end up closely watching the surveillance footage to supervise the nanny, he said.
The first prize went to Rehearsal, a cartoon by Shen Miaoliang, also in his 70s. It represents a happy moment at an old people's home; two performers are in the middle of a comedy skit when something goes wrong. One of them scratches his head and says, "I forgot the next line." This results in the elderly people in the audience bursting into laughter.
Other winning titles show elderly people's ageless love for beauty, differences in thoughts between the elderly and the young, the hobbies of aged people, the difficult moments in old people's home and so on.
Apart from the entries, the exhibition also presented some other works created by the residents at the elderly care center of Shangxi town.
A picture titled Sunflower and Hairy Crab was created by 86-year-old Gong Jincui, who has been living in the care center for three years due to hemiplegic paralysis and loves drawing. Another work called My Home was created by 88-year-old Chen Jinju, who has been living here for five years and taken the care center as her home.
"Typically, our center schedules several art classes each week led by dedicated social workers and organizes many interactive activities. Each month, the drawing class has a different theme to encourage the elderly to create their own art. For us, the focus is not on the beauty of the art, but on allowing the elderly to express their emotions. Each month, we select some of the artworks for a small exhibition," says Chen Zhiya, head of the care center.
Chen Zhiya, 35, graduated from Peking University with a doctor's degree in neuroscience in 2023. At the invitation of the government of her hometown Yiwu, she opened the old people's home in the city in early 2020 as the population in Yiwu was aging quickly in recent years with more than 21 percent of the residents aged 60 and above.
At first, Chen Zhiya was hesitant about running an old people's home because she had misgivings about the project.
"I'm an optimistic, extroverted and sensitive person. I didn't want to work in an unhappy place," she says.
However, since 2016, after the invitation, she had visited old people's homes in Japan, the United States and Australia over three years.
The visits completely changed her idea about homes for the elderly and she saw they can be clean and warm and the residents have a sense of belonging.
In old people's homes in Japan, she saw light in the eyes and smiles on the faces of the residents, who were willing to communicate with her.
"When I had meetings with my teams, I always said there's only one goal that we are aiming at in our work, that is, how to make the elderly's eyes sparkle," she says.
Now Chen Zhiya's home has about 240 people, whose average age is 87 and 180 suffer from severe dementia.
"So currently, what we do is to let dementia patients live a quality life through good care," she says.
Chen Zhiya's first experience of dementia happened when she was a sophomore student at university. One day during that Spring Festival, her grandmother suddenly left home in an irritated state, and died in an accident. It was not until one year later that she learned that her grandmother had suffered from Alzheimer's disease for years.
"Now with this old people's home, I want to do something for the elderly people who have dementia, to make up for any previous shortcomings," she says.
In the first two years after the home opened, Chen received a lot of Alzheimer patients who had not been properly looked after.
"Some people were covered with scratches and bruises, and were in a terrible state. Their families did not know what to do," she says.
Besides memory loss, late-stage Alzheimer patients display other symptoms such as leaving home unexpectedly and delusions of persecution and theft, causing deep distress.
What is worse, some patients have no idea what to do with feces, so that they may smear it on the walls or put them on other people's beds.
"Their families have no idea why they behave like that and even think they deliberately make things difficult, so that they may just lock the patients in a small room. After several months, when they sent the patients to our home, they were in a terrible state," she says.
At the home, Chen Zhiya's team tries to help them with professional knowledge, care and patience.
"For example, if an old lady suddenly claims that she lost her necklace, what we need to do is to help her recollect memories about the 'missing necklace'. Then we become a team so that she trusts you and is not so anxious. After looking for a while, her attention could be distracted so that she would forget about the necklace," she says.
To better help dementia patients, the home tries to create different spaces for them to walk around. However, they often cannot find way back to their rooms.
"So we use different colors and patterns to decorate their doors. Some patients may remember that there is a kid or two pandas on their doors, and patients with more serious cognition problems may vaguely remember the colors, orange or blue," she says.
Besides, the care center invited some painters to make cartoons or paint some old scenes on the corridors — old houses, rice fields, and one of the scenic spots, Taohuawu, in Shangxi, which is covered with peach blossoms in spring.
Chen Zhiya found these paintings are really helpful for patients to find their way back to their rooms and cheer up.
Among the classes organized by the old people's home — knitting, playing cards, sports, singing and so on — Chen Zhiya observed that the residents are best at drawing. Every month, in the drawings of each person, they will choose one, which will be exhibited at the care center.
Having also drawn a lot of pictures about the stories in the home herself since 2020, she thought about using caricature to let people learn more about old people and their lives.
In the series The Stories about Time and Me, Chen Zhiya records many touching moments in the care home. One is about a couple, both over 85.
The man was severely disabled, and his wife suffered from severe dementia. At home, the wife usually looked after the man. As her dementia worsened, both were sent to the care center, living together at first.
The wife would treat the old man like a child, "disciplining" him. If she saw that he was reluctant to eat, she would swiftly raise a shoe and hit him. Because living together posed a risk of harm, they had to live separately. However, the man felt very uneasy, and the wife would look for him everywhere when she couldn't see him, running back and forth.
The first picture by Chen Zhiya depicts a scene on Feb 21, 2020, when both were relatively stable and happily holding hands.
However, about half a year later, the wife suddenly suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and became unresponsive to any external stimuli. Despite the pandemic at that time, Chen Zhiya found a way to arrange a meeting between them. On the way to the wife's CT scan, the caregiver brought the husband to her side, who slowly reached out and gently held her hand. A miraculous moment occurred: sunlight streamed through the window, shining on them, and at that instant, the wife turned her head to look at her husband and tears rolled down her cheeks. This was their last meeting.
A little over two months later, they passed away within 24 hours in different places.
This scene is deeply etched in Chen Zhiya's mind. She drew a picture from the photo she had taken and added a heartfelt caption: "I strive to keep my eyes open, just to see you once more when we hold hands."
"This picture touches many people. That's why we organize such a competition with a theme about elderly care. I want to let people know that elderly care is not only about pain, chaos, sadness or lifelessness," she says.
