China’s retirees are breaking free from long-held expectations centered on family duties and caregiving, challenging stereotypes that cast older people as preoccupied with their children’s marriages, grandchildren and domestic routines.
A growing number of them are now doing some soul-searching and seizing learning opportunities abroad, determined to make fuller use of their retirement years, whether in search of fulfillment or simply for their own happiness.
While younger generations debate whether an overseas degree is worth its staggering price tag, a growing wave of gray-haired retirees is packing suitcases and walking into lecture halls around the world, not for diplomas, but for themselves.
For nearly two decades, Li Guolin could barely get out of bed.
A spinal fracture in 2000 forced her into early retirement from her job at a bank in the coastal city of Zhuhai, in South China’s Guangdong province. Her world shrank to a mattress and the relentless companion of chronic pain.
“My whole attention was on the pain. My social circle was tiny, and I didn’t want to do anything,” she recalls.
She tried group tours after she finally got back on her feet in 2019, but the rushed itineraries exhausted her.
“Too tiring, not for me,” she says, adding that the pain still returns from time to time.
Then, in April 2024, she stumbled upon a short art program in Italy, with some preparatory art lessons arranged.
Something clicked inside her.
“It was exactly the kind of tomorrow I had been hoping for,” she says, adding that it satisfied her interest in art and living in a foreign country for a while.
During preparation in Beijing, she painted under instruction for the first time in decades. There were no rules, no grades. Just guidance.
“I was completely absorbed, and the pain disappeared,” she says.
A few weeks later, she flew to Florence, Italy, for a two-week fashion design program at a local institute, which was her first time abroad as a learner rather than a tourist. She had never worked with fabric or dressed a mannequin. By the end of the course, she had completed seven or eight original pieces.
“The whole process swept my pain away,” she says.
Li is among a growing number of older Chinese citizens redefining what retirement can look like. Once largely confined to domestic chores, square dancing or the occasional group tour, many of China’s “new elderly” are now turning their gaze toward foreign lecture halls.