Value added

Apart from engaging themselves in volunteer work or social activities, some retired senior citizens, such as academics and technicians, manage to find new jobs.

Technician Tian Xiaoqing, 57, didn’t like the thought of being idle when she retired two years ago. “It’s the Internet age now. I can’t allow myself to be swept aside by the tide of information,” Tian told Chinafrica. In April 2015, soon after she retired, Tian registered to be a cook on a home kitchen app called Huijia Chifan (Going Home for Meals), working by linking consumers with amateur workat-home chefs, who cook dishes on demand, with delivery and logistics handled by the app operators.

Using the Huijia Chifan app, Tian offers home-made dishes for customers, especially for young office workers with little time or inclination to cook. “It’s too tiring for young people to cook after a whole day’s work. And it’s unhealthy to order fast food. I hope the flavor of my dishes could offer them a taste of home,” Tian said.

Tian’s specialty dish is braised pork in brown sauce, for which she receives more than 10 orders daily. “I’m good at cooking and I love cooking. This is a good way for me to kill time and make some extra pocket money,” Tian said. She makes an average net profit of 3,000 yuan ($435) per month.

To date, Huijia Chifan, Mamadecai (Mother’s Dishes) and Cengfan (Neighbor’s Meal) are the three home kitchen-sharing apps dominating China’s larger cities. More than 4,000 people from some 100 communities in Beijing are currently using the Huijia Chifan app. Typically, the service providers tend to be retirees, housewives and cooking enthusiasts, with retirees constituting the highest proportion (about 40 percent).

Re-employment for people in technical and professional positions, who have reached retirement age, can prove beneficial to society, according to observers.

Yan Xue’an, 65, formerly a senior technician in a stateowned automobile enterprise, established an automobile repair plant with several friends in north China’s Shanxi Province after he retired. Yan is familiar with automobile parts and his skills in repairing vehicles are often better than the younger mechanics.

“The value of life is to leave some shining points of you in other people’s memory. Age is not a limitation for people to achieve this. Entrepreneurship is a passionate and happy process,” Yan told Chinafrica. “I will continue to work as long as my physical condition permits it.”

Engaging in more work allows the elderly to have better self-esteem, raises their sense of identity, and alleviates their loneliness and depression, said Tao Liqun, research fellow at China Research Center on Aging. Comments to xyy@chinafrica.cn