Migratory humans flock to Hainan
Print Edition
Having finished a six-month stay in Sanya on the southern most island province of Hainan, Zhang Guizhen, 69, and her husband Yang Yuhua, went back home to Harbin, China’s northernmost provincial capital, where the spring arrives in late April.
Over the past 13 years, Zhang has become accustomed to flying to Sanya in October and back to Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, the following May like a “migratory bird,” just in time to spend Mother’s Day with her children.
Across China, millions of seniors are traveling north and south for a pleasant life all year around.
Zhang said she joined a group consisting of 100 older citizens who go to the tropical island for a warm winter stay, where the average temperature remains above 20 degrees Celsius in December. Zhang used to suffer from the freezing air in her home city, as the temperature usually falls below minus 20 degrees in winter.
She was in lasting discomfort due to her arthritis flaring-up in cold weather. Thanks to the warm weather of Sanya, her swollen knees and pain have gone for good.
According to a report by the Hainan Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the number of migrants to Hainan exceeds 1 million every winter, most are from northeast China, though many come from other areas.
“Sanya and Harbin are over 4,000 kilometers apart, but for me, it’s just an air ticket away,” Yang said.
The migrants’ retired life is conditioned by rising incomes, improved infrastructure and better facilities. Local property firms in Sanya have designed senior-citizen apartments with special features for elderly care, such as emergency buttons linked to medical services.
As the long-distance settlement of medical insurance has been adopted for years, the migrants can enjoy health care services anywhere. Local pharmacies are also stocked with medicines for common elderly diseases such as heart attacks, hypertension and arthritis.
As additional trips between Harbin and Sanya in summer and winter surge, tourist agencies have chartered special trains for passengers to travel between the north and south every November and April.
Now that summer is approaching, Yinquan Seniors’ House, which has 100-plus guest rooms in Heihe, Heilongjiang, has been booked up by elderly people in the south attracted by the mild summer, said Wang Wenlan, manager of the house.
According to data released by Heilongjiang Department of Civil Affairs, 2.05 million seniors sojourned in the province in 2017, with total expenditure reaching 14.35 billion yuan (US$2.27 billion).
“Such a tourist flow shows social change regarding the cultural tradition of being attached to one’s native land in the past,” said Wang Yalin, professor of sociology at Harbin Institute of Technology. “It is an inevitable trend in China that people are moving from cold industrial cities to sunny places, a phenomenon that occurred in the United States in 1950s and 1960s.”
“My life is as good as it can be, and I am not afraid of getting old,” Zhang said.
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