Growing Old in a New China
Global Perspectives on Aging
Series editor, Sarah Lamb
This series publishes books that will deepen and expand our understanding of age, aging, ageism, and late life in the United States and beyond. The series focuses on anthropology while being open to ethnographically vivid and theoretically rich scholarship in related fields, including sociology, religion, cultural studies, social medicine, medical humanities, gender and sexuality studies, human development, critical and cultural gerontology, and age studies. Books will be aimed at students, scholars, and occasionally the general public.
Jason Danely, Aging and Loss: Mourning and Maturity in Contemporary Japan
Parin Dossa and Cati Coe, eds., Transnational Aging and Reconfigurations of Kin Work
Sarah Lamb, ed., Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession: Global Perspectives
Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People
Ellyn Lem, Gray Matters: Finding Meaning in the Stories of Later Life
Michele Ruth Gamburd, Linked Lives: Elder Care, Migration, and Kinship in Sri Lanka
Yohko Tsuji, Through Japanese Eyes: Thirty Years of Studying Aging in America
Jessica C. Robbins, Aging Nationally in Contemporary Poland: Memory, Kinship, and Personhood
Rose K. Keimig, Growing Old in a New China: Transitions in Elder Care
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Keimig, Rose K., author.
Title: Growing old in a new China: transitions in elder care / Rose K. Keimig.
Description: New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2021. |
Series: Global perspectives on aging | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020019304 | ISBN 9781978813915 (paperback) | ISBN 9781978813922 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781978813939 (epub) | ISBN 9781978813946 (mobi) | ISBN 9781978813953 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Older peopleCareChina. | Older peopleServices forChina. | Aging parentsCareChina. | GeriatricsSocial aspectsChina. | AgingSocial aspectsChina. | Intergenerational relationsChina. | Social changeChina.
Classification: LCC HV1484.C62 K44 2021 | DDC 362.60951dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020019304
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.
Copyright 2021 by Rose K. Keimig
All rights reserved
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The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
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We therefore recognize, around our initiatives and around that strictly individual project which is oneself, a zone of generalized existence and of projects already formed, significances which trail between ourselves and things.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
Phenomenology of Perception
Ma Meili Her close proximity to the front gate and clarity of mind made her the obvious choice when staff members needed a firsthand account of institutional life for visitors, reporters, or anthropologists. At seventy-eight, she had lived at Jade Hills for nearly three years. Before retiring, she had worked in a watch factory alongside her husband, whom she deeply admired for his skilled craftsmanship. She also prided herself on being extremely capable, both as a worker and motherhaving raised three successful sons, one of whom coached Olympic athletes. Six years earlier she had suffered a stroke, and when her husband died three years after that, she had discharged their in-home caregiver and moved to Jade Hills.
Auntie Ma was feeling very sad today. In fact, she was sad every day. It was because of the stroke, she said. Before the stroke, she was so capable. She could do everything. Now she cant do anything. She lifted her affected left wrist with her opposite hand and let it drop in her lap. She began to cry. If the stroke hadnt happened, she would still be able to do so much. I asked her if she talked to her children about how sad she was, but she said no. She didnt want to make them sad. They were going to come visit her today, but it was too hot, so she had told them not to come. Chinese people are very good to their children, arent they? she asked.
When Auntie Ma spoke these words on a sunny Kunming afternoon in May 2014, as we sat side by side in a small patch of shade bordering the institutions makeshift parking lot, they held a special pathos for me. On September 17, 2013, less than a month before I was scheduled to depart to conduct research on aging and caregiving in China, my mom, an otherwise healthy, fifty-five-year-old nurse practitioner, had suffered a hemorrhagic brainstem stroke. Leaving my caregiving ethnographies and research materials in New Haven, Connecticut, I took the first flight home to Minnesota and spent the next two weeks navigating the intensive care unit gray zone of impossible choice making and uncertain outcomes that I had read so much about (Kaufman 2005).
Anthropologists strive to immerse themselves deeply in other worlds, to set preconditions aside and explore the unknown through practices of discovery and inquiry, and then to describe that experience in a way that makes the strange familiar and the familiar strange. Indeed, thanks to Sharon Kaufman and other ethnographers of end-of-life caregiving (see Biehl 2005; L. Cohen 1998; Lock 2002; McLean 2007) who have beautifully captured the formless time, the desperate search for meaning (I think she moved her toes!), and the exchanges of care within medical institutions, I did find the hospital experience strangely familiar. However, those accounts are drawn from the far side of the participant-observers lens and within the bounds of the academics research schedule. Eventually even Bronisaw Malinowskis boat returned. Meanwhile, just beyond the observational space and time, the institutional experience continues to unfold.
Defying the odds, my mom slowly regained consciousnessa new kind of consciousness, to be sure, but far beyond the blinky lady outcome the social worker had advised my family to prepare for. After my mom was moved down to the neuro-progressive ward, my dad and I had a conversation about care plans. He was still working full-time, as were both of my sisters, so I expected to postpone my fieldwork indefinitely. He rejected my plan. I would go to China. They would figure it out. This was not up for discussion, so I left my parents at the inpatient rehabilitation facility and flew to China to spend a year interviewing parents whose children had left them in institutions.
