Ba Yi: An old-age home for China’s Red Army veterans
YAN’AN,CHINA: The Ba Yi (August 1) home for army veterans on the outskirts of Yan’an city is a sprawling complex of sunlit rooms, quiet, antiseptic corridors and manicured gardens.
It is one of the oldest homes in China for army veterans – built in 1959 – and named after the day when the first Communist army was commissioned on August 1, 1927. At least half-a-dozen of its inmates were part of the Red Army, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) predecessor, and fought during the civil war and the anti-japanese war in the late 1930s and 1940s.
Besides giving a home to the veterans, the complex also serves as a destination for “patriotic education” where student and official delegations are invited to listen to the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) history and the battles it fought before establishing New China in 1949, said Xue Li, the home’s director.
Earlier this year, China increased the pension and living subsidies for disabled veterans, Red Army veterans and families of martyrs.
Xue added that more than 10 million Yuan is usually spent on the home annually.
For the veterans, it is free. The situation for the veterans in the home is better than those Chinese army veterans who have held several protests in recent years about their low living standards and uncertain post-retirement life – some to be sentenced to jail terms for doing so. The protests were possibly one reason why Beijing established a ministry of veteran affairs in 2018.