University for aged lets Chinese elderly enjoy retired life

China has 264 million people aged 60 years and above, accounting for 18.7 percent of its 1.4 billion population in total, according to the seventh population census conducted in 2020. The aged population was expected to surpass 300 million in five years.

Universities for the aged have changed the concept of many Chinese elderly people from "surviving old age" to "enjoying their old age."

"My retirement life was lit up by the elderly university," said Xin Jianrong, a 65-year-old retired worker.

Refusing to be constrained by babysitting her grandchildren in her later years, Xin began studying dancing and vocal music at the Anqiu elderly university ten years ago. "I want to find my passion," Xin told her family.

Xin has loved artistic performance since childhood but never had the opportunity to learn systematically. Now at university, she is often the first to arrive and the last to leave.

After class, Xin organized a troupe in the community to perform square dancing, a physical activity popular with middle-aged and retired women, who do natural movements to a musical accompaniment in open places in cities, aiming to spread her learning achievements at university.

Xin's husband, friends, and neighbors also joined the elderly university under her influence. Such appeal makes Xin into a "dancing advertisement."