(China Daily) BEIJING – Meng Xianping registered to get his mother into a local nursing home at the end of 2009, but he and the rest of the family – three generations living under one roof – are still waiting as the matriarch approaches 90.<\/p>\n
The nursing home, named Evergreen, said that Meng’s mother is not the only one waiting for a place in the home, which has 500 beds: it’s had about 2,700 people on its waiting list – since 2008.<\/p>\n
In fact, this phenomenon of finding it hard to locate a bed in an affordable nursing home in Beijing, not to mention elsewhere in China, is not as rare as one might think.<\/p>\n
“The nation is suffering from a great shortage of old-age homes,” said Yan Qingchun, deputy director of the China National Committee on Aging (CNCA).<\/p>\n
Beijing had approximately 90,000 people waiting for a place in a nursing home, at the end of 2009, but there were only 30,000 beds available, according to official statistics.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the number of people nationwide aged 60 or older amounted to 167 million by 2009. That was 12.5 percent of the population, according to the CNCA.<\/p>\n
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