Tasteful old age: A qualitative study on nursing home marketing and class identity among middle-class older adults in urban China

Abstract

This ethnographic study investigates how middle-class identity among older adults in China, influenced by the marketing strategies of private nursing homes, is constructed through their imagination of a tasteful old age. This research uses participant observation and in-depth interviews to analyze the role of class and social and cultural capital in shaping residents' choices about late-life care. A total of 44 individuals participated in this study. In China, private nursing homes target middle-class older adults by utilizing media and tour programs to advertise a new concept of aging and craft a specific image of being middle-class. Thus, older adults who encounter these advertisements might discover new possibilities of a non-traditional, modern kind of old age in China and begin to aspire to embody that idea. These older adults enjoy a private yet socially engaging environment in upscale retirement homes, which they imagine as a gated community (and, in fact, are gated) with hierarchical spaces. During data collection, this demographic emphasized that they had persuaded their children, who opposed sending their parents to a nursing home due to traditional filial piety values, to allow them to move into Xingfu Retirement Home, an aspirational middle-class living space for China's aging population. Their narratives illustrate that they perceive themselves as possessing a more enlightened mindset than their children (because they embrace a new form of senior care) and that they embody a middle-class identity replete with social, economic, and cultural capital. This self-concept reinforces a hierarchical view of old age, where one's ability to choose and afford a certain type of care becomes a marker of class distinction.