Hong Kong, a highly age-integrated society

I never realized how highly age-integrated Hong Kong is until I visited Singapore. Singapore, a garden city, is very pretty and highly organized. If you walk around downtown and along Raffles Place, you will not run into older people, no matter what time of the day it is. It is entirely a young peoples' world. Even as I visited beach areas famous for seafood, I found hardly any families bringing seniors along to dinner. The only exception is probably Singapore's Chinatown, where I may have met more people who were older.

This is in stark contrast to Hong Kong. Here, you run into seniors anywhere who are going about their business. In the Central District—the business core of Hong Kong—you brush shoulders with young and old alike. You find rich seniors having high tea in the Mandarin Hotel—you know they're rich by the way they dress and how they carry themselves—and you run into seniors picking up cardboard boxes to sell to recycling merchants. Hong Kong seniors may shop at the famous Lane Crawford emporium, or they may be selling small items (scarves, imitation jewelry, scissors, fans, all sorts) in their stalls on a side or back street in Central. Both the young and the old fight with you for use of the pavement, and we all jaywalk.

I once asked a Singaporean friend why I so rarely find seniors in downtown Singapore. She told me it was because they did not need to go downtown. All their needs could be met in the housing estate in which they lived. Housing communities are designed to be self-sufficient in Singapore, with clinics, shopping malls and community centers. But I still do not get it. Because their needs can be met entirely within their neighborhood, they have no business visiting downtown at all?

I have tried hard to think of the reasons that may account for the differences between the two cities. I can't put my finger on it. I think back to other cities I have visited—Stockholm, London, Taipei, Chicago. Now that I am trying to make sense out of an observation, I am no longer sure of what the other cities are like. But I am certain that they are unlike Singapore, which has made a deep impression on me in this regard.

I strongly object to retirement communities. I would not move into one myself. Why do we need age-segregated communities when, in the real world, people of all ages live together?

Yes, young people can be cruel sometimes, mocking those who have grown old and frail. But not all young people are so. Yes, the amenities of a retirement community may be quite attractive, but meeting with people from all walks of life is much more interesting. We can only promote understanding and acceptance between generations if we live together, not separate from one another.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.

Burial places

Hong Kong is very crowded by any standard—426 square miles of hilly land masses hosting a population of close to 7 million. We fight for a space of our own when we are alive, and our loved ones may still need to fight for a space for us when we are dead. I say “fight,” because I mean it.

Chinese people love to buy their own living space, instead of renting. Because space is at a premium here, housing occupies a huge percentage of people’s monthly income. Given the motivation to own their own apartment (not houses; few people in Hong Kong’s urban area can afford to own a house), people have to fight hard in life to make ends meet.

Recently, the way people “fight” in Hong Kong to get a spot for themselves or deceased family members hit the news headlines. Although burial is a Chinese tradition, nowadays it is no longer the norm. Burial land is scarce and, therefore, very costly and only for the privileged. More and more people now opt for cremation. But Chinese people believe it is not good to keep your ancestors’ ashes in your home. The forces of yin and yang will not be balanced; yin will be too strong. Urns should be kept in proper places, either in a cemetery or a columbarium (a place for the storage of cinerary urns). Public columbaria are not affiliated with any religion, but private ones are usually built and maintained in accordance with Buddhist traditions.

Because of the severe shortage of spots for urns, business-minded people have developed illegal columbaria. The problem surfaced when the government tried to put these illegal operations out of business. Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to the problem, even though the government intends to build more public columbaria. Nobody wants one in their neighborhood.

When I die, I would like to donate all my tissues and organs, if they are still usable, and then have my body cremated and my ashes used to plant a tree. I don’t need a tombstone or an urn. As society becomes more liberal, discussion of life and death matters becomes less of a taboo. Many elderly Chinese people do make plans for their funerals and burials. This is a good thing, as the family will be comforted to know that they have done what their loved ones wanted.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.

Social security in Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, when a senior wishes to apply for social security—locally, we call it Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA)—they have to sign a statement declaring that their offspring will not support them. What an infringement of a person’s rights!

Some people do not like to sign such a statement. Other times, sons or daughters will not allow their parents to make such a declaration, because doing so would not reflect well on them. In these cases, the poor, older person has to rely on the non-means-tested Old Age Allowance (OAA), a sum of $1,000 HK provided by the government to all seniors at age 70.

CSSA carries with it a social stigma. Many who do not want to apply for CSSA will try to live on the meager thousand dollars provided by OAA, which means an unimaginably hard life in a city like Hong Kong, where the cost of living is not cheap.

While surveys and research reports in the Western world show that most older adults have finished high school, studies here report that the mean number of years of education received by Hong Kong seniors is only two to three. Many of them do hard manual labor their entire lives. Hong Kong is an affluent society but, as in many advanced countries, most of the city’s wealth is possessed by a very small percentage of the population. Our older folks, in particular, are not well off.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.