ASIA / PACIFIC
July 6, 2015
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 3
Senior travel booms in China, with Yangtze a popular spot
VENERABLE VACATIONERS. An elderly man
is pushed in a wheelchair at the Temple of Heaven
park in Beijing. The number of senior tourists in China
jumped by 58 percent last year compared to 2013,
according to the state-run China Daily newspaper, and
62 percent of Chinese senior citizens join organized
tours. Pictured below is an elderly Chinese man ges-
turing near travel agencies in southwestern China’s
Chongqing Municipality. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
By Jack Chang
The Associated Press
EIJING — When Li Caohua
retired in her late 50s, the doctor
immediately joined millions of
other Chinese seniors and hit the road to
see more of her giant country.
At the top of her destination list was
tropical Hainan island in the south and the
ancient villages around her home city of
Beijing. Then there was the most
grandiose of China’s landscapes — the
mythic brown waters of the Yangtze River
and its mist-enveloped Three Gorges.
Over the decades, Li survived such
horrors of 20th-century Chinese history as
the manmade famines that killed more
than 30 million people in the late 1950s
and the political anarchy of the Cultural
Revolution that followed. Now, as she and
hundreds of other seniors danced, played
cards, and chatted in the winding
walkways of Beijing’s Temple of Heaven,
Li said it was her time to play.
“We are fortunate in China that we can
travel, and I’ve seen so much,” the
60-year-old woman said. “We’re all
travelling now to a lot of places.”
Travel agencies and packages catering
to elderly Chinese say business is booming
amid overall growth in the country’s travel
industry. The number of senior tourists in
China jumped by 58 percent last year
compared to 2013, according to the
state-run China Daily newspaper, and 62
percent of Chinese senior citizens join
organized tours.
One such tour ended tragically when a
river cruiser carrying more than 450
people, mostly elderly tourists, capsized in
a heavy storm in the Yangtze. More than
430 people were killed, making the
capsizing the deadliest maritime tragedy
to hit China since the country’s civil war
seven decades earlier.
The tour was organized by the Shanghai
Xiehe Tourism Agency, with the ship run
by the state-owned Chongqing Eastern
Shipping Corp., which specializes in
Yangtze River travel. The ship, the
Eastern Star, was plying the river
upstream from Nanjing near the eastern
coast all the way inland to Chongqing, a
B
trip of 10 days and about 870 miles.
There are many versions of senior-
friendly trips designed for different income
groups, with some low-cost options
charging 3,000 yuan, or about $480, for
five days on Hainan island, not including
airfare, said Beijing travel agent Qi Chun
Guan. For Yangtze River travel, most
groups fly into the metropolis of
Chongqing and then travel downstream to
the city of Yichang, Qi said.
“Before, the elderly saved all their
money,” Qi said. “Now, they want to go out
and see the rest of the world. These people
have seen their share of suffering in their
lives. Now, with economic development,
it’s so different from previous genera-
tions.”
The boom in travel has been one
economic bright spot to a graying
population that’s presenting China with
one of its most serious policy challenges.
With U.N. data showing the number of
Chinese over age 65 projected to almost
double to 210 million people by 2030, the
country’s retirement system will struggle
to keep up, especially as China’s one-child
policy limits the number of working-age
people who can pay for the pensions and
meager benefits of their elders, said Yong
Cai, an assistant sociology professor at the
University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill.
“It’s very clear that the next 10 to 15
years down the road will not be so good for
the pension system,” Yong said. “Xi
Jinping has been saying China has to deal
with the new economic reality and part of
this is a new demographic reality.”
For middle-class seniors, however,
comes strength in numbers, Qi said.
Elderly women known as “dancing
grannies” fill the parks of many cities with
their music and dance routines. Enormous
groups of seniors are also regular sights at
Chinese tourist attractions such as
Beijing’s Forbidden City.
Among the most popular domestic
destinations for elderly Chinese are the
southeastern coastal province of Fujian
and central Sichuan province, where the
Eastern Star cruise ship was headed when
it overturned, Qi said.
He said travel along the Yangtze has
fallen since the world’s biggest hydro-
electric project, the Three Gorges Dam,
opened in 2012 and flooded historic sites
and scenic canyons.
One 55-year-old property manager, who
would only identify himself by his family
name of Shu, said he took two-day trips to
towns around Beijing with other older
Chinese, paying 600 yuan, or about $100,
for each excursion. He recently strolled
along the Temple of Heaven’s historic
covered walkway, protected from the rain
and taking in the fresh air, part of what he
said was his semi-retired morning routine.
“If you have the money, you go out and
play,” Shu said. “I’ve learned to like it.”
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