Elderly find fulfillment in language and labor

Under a program supported by the Ningxia Hui autonomous region, willing rural elderly people have been learning to read ancient Chinese poetry in standard Mandarin so they can perform better as e-commerce anchors.

They earn some extra money and have fun in the process.

Xu Ling, who is in charge of the program in Hongde village in Wuzhong, Ningxia, has been teaching poems to nine seniors since the second half of 2022.

Previously, they couldn't recognize the words on the screen and could only interact with netizens through a dialect that the netizens didn't understand. At that time, Xu came up with the idea of teaching them to read poems using Mandarin.

"As e-commerce anchors, they want to communicate better with netizens when they promote local products like wolfberry, day lilies and wine," Xu said.

Zhao Shumei, 60, said she has learned 100 or 200 characters and memorized nearly 200 poems.

"We could not speak Mandarin because we come from a remote mountainous area. We learned Mandarin better by reciting poems. In the livestream room, we introduce our products to netizens. Now I can occasionally recognize characters," she said.

Nowadays, there are full livestreams of their morning exercises, reading, reciting poems, learning to write and selling products. Many netizens are attracted and touched by their enterprising spirit.

"We want to give them a happy life and explore a new model of elderly care in rural areas. We even found that some elderly people on the internet are watching our livestreams to learn poems," Xu said.

Hongde village in Ningxia is a 2012 ecological migration settlement for 1,304 households from Yuanzhou district of Guyuan city and Tongxin county of Wuzhong.

There were more than 100 households of left-behind elderly people from age 55 to 80 in the village. To improve their living standards, the local government adopted a program to provide job opportunities.

At its peak, about 60 to 70 elderly people participated in the workshop installing handles on packing cases, a job that is not physically demanding. They could earn about 1,000 yuan ($145) a month.

The cost of installing a handle by machine was 0.01 yuan; by hand it was 0.03 yuan. Widely appreciated by the public, the enterprise also celebrated birthdays and provided other welfare benefits for the elderly.

"They have a strong sense of dignity, fulfillment and happiness through their work," Xu said.

After their material demands were met, nine people joined the newly established Hongde workshop e-commerce center.

"They want to continue to work in this workshop because they feel lonely at home," Xu said.

Now the basic salary per person is 1,500 yuan a month, plus commissions. Sales have reached about 2 million yuan. In 2021, they were honored in a provincial e-commerce festival competition.

"They enjoy broad prospects in the future," Xu said.

Video edited by Wang Yefu

Wang Songsong contributed to the story.