For the love and care of elderly parents

I remember seeing a very impressive public service advertisement promoting filial piety. It asked people to draw a 30 by 30 grid on a sheet of paper, with each square representing one month of a person's life (considering the average life span is 75 years), to calculate how many more months or years they are likely to live. Those who work in cities far away from their hometowns can also calculate how much time of their adult life they have spent (or will spend) with their parents.

The ad came back to haunt me after this Spring Festival holiday, a time when many people traveled back home to share the festive joys with their parents and probably have to wait for another year before they can do so again.

With China facing an aging population and accelerating migration from rural to urban areas, and the members of the "one-child" generation becoming the sole breadwinners in their families, taking care of senior citizens is becoming an increasingly tough social challenge both in cities and the countryside.