Short Video Craze at a Nursing Home

A group of senior citizens face the camera and deliver lines from a scripted sketch ending with the homespun homily, “There are some parents who always compare their children with other people’s children, but they never think to compare themselves with other parents.” The occasional bloopers of these senior players make fellow actors fall about laughing. But rather than reproving them, the director joins in the merriment. This is not a stage rehearsal or movie set scenario, but a video shooting taking place at a nursing home in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin.

Since last April, Jingya Nursing Home, in an effort to enrich the lives of its elderly residents, has taken the new approach of shooting short videos. These have since attracted nearly a million followers and scored over six million likes on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.

Senior Roles

Chen Yuan, director of the nursing home, and Chen Zhuo, former employee of the post-90s generation, came up with this idea. In the course of helping out at his uncle’s nursing home Chen Zhuo noticed that, although its senior residents were well taken care of, they were somewhat listless. To cheer them up, Chen Zhuo and his friend Feng Yan decided to shoot short videos with them.

The characters they created were based on the residents’ jobs prior to retiring. Ninety-year-old Yu Youfang, for example, having been a high school chemistry teacher, played the leading role in a popular series titled Chemistry Class. Yu’s students, dressed in school uniforms provided by their grandchildren, were played by her Jingya peers.

But this is no normal chemistry class, featuring as it does shades of black comedy. In one of the most popular episodes, Yu asks two of her students to distinguish carbon monoxide from carbon dioxide by sniffing the two bottles that respectively contain them. After inhaling these gases, Yu observes, “We can now see that the student standing beside me holds the bottle containing carbon dioxide, while the one who sniffed that containing carbon monoxide, which is toxic, is being carried off on a stretcher.” Yu herself can’t help but laugh as she concludes, “Death by gas misadventure might also occur at our home!” These chemistry-oriented howlers prompt quips from viewers like, “Yu’s class seems extravagant in its consumption of students!”

The humor displayed by seniors in these short videos, particularly as regards their pragmatic stance on death, has gained wide traction among viewers. More importantly, they avoid being condescending to their young viewers by structuring themes in a way that younger people can relate to.

For instance, in an episode of another popular series in which Jingya troupers explain life lessons, one of them emphasizes the importance of talking to other people with due respect. Yu then asks, “Do you know a manner of speaking that really annoys people?” to which her elderly students reply, “Answering questions with a rhetorical question.” One student accordingly asks another, “Have you seen my dentures?” to which the other replies, “You have a pair of eyes in your head, don’t you? Why not look for them yourself?” The student asking the question then brandishes a fake sword in a humorous gesture to express mock anger, one that young people commonly use online. This sketch was hence well received, prompting the comment from one viewer, “This is exactly what happens in real life.”

Apart from expressing humor and enacting a common touch, seniors in these short videos also broach hot social media topics, including online buzzwords, ChatGPT, and even AI face-swapping fraud, among others. This runs counter to the senior stereotype of being old-fashioned and resistant to change, so giving many younger viewers pause for thought.

China Today was present at the shooting of a short video featuring seniors earlier this year. Feng Yan had printed the script in an extra-large font, and as the players have no performance experience, he read each of them their lines, sentence by sentence. When they occasionally forgot their lines, Feng patiently repeated them, over and over again, cutting them into smaller segments where necessary. And when a player made a mistake and shamefacedly apologized, Feng told them not to worry and just try again. Their humorous out-takes were also recorded. Feng encouraged his players to incorporate facial expressions and gestures, such as hitting the table to express anger, into their performances. Feng Yan told China Today that he wrote the scripts, and that filming a sketch usually takes 30 to 40 minutes.

Behind the Scenes

Over 70 elderly people live in the Jingya Nursing Home, where the average age is now around 80 years old. About 10 of them take part in the short videos. Many residents have underlying medical conditions, including spinocerebellar ataxias, hemiplegia, and blindness. “We welcome all seniors’ participation in the short videos. Even those that have trouble speaking can form part of the background as extras,” Feng Yan said.

Filming short videos has helped these seniors maintain an optimistic life view. For instance, Wang Li suffered a cerebral infarction that led to hemiplegia and divorce. After arriving at the nursing home, he declined to interact with other residents, preferring to sit and smoke in the corner by himself. “He refused to perform at first because, given his condition, he felt self-conscious. But he watched us from nearby while we were shooting. After gradually gaining interest, he eventually joined in,” Feng Yan said. Since then, Wang has become far more outgoing and eager to take part. In one shot, Wang even spoke the line, “My life is a matter for my own decisions.”

Shooting these videos has also bolstered the senior residents’ sense of self-worth. Feng Yan told China Today that it isn’t death, but being forgotten by civil society that they most dread. Eighty-seven-year-old Liu Guoxia, formally a textile worker, has been featured in the videos since last year. She happily told us, “I’m very happy to take part. Even though I can’t read, I’m nevertheless famous. My grandchild was thrilled when she told me, ‘Grandma, you’re on TV!’ Many of my relatives, former colleagues, and neighbors called me after seeing me perform to say they wanted to come visit.” As ever greater numbers of mainstream media outlet representatives went to hold interviews at this newly famous nursing home, its residents’ stories became known to more people.

Having fun is what most matters to these senior residents. Jingya Nursing Home is also known on social media as the Gendu Nursing Home, as in the Tianjin dialect gen means funny and du stands for capital. The character gen vividly reflects the positive life view prevalent in the home. Some of these elderly players have adopted chic English names given to them by an English Internet celebrity: Wang Li’s English name is Bob, and Liu Guoxia’s is Katherine. “We took the short videos just for fun, but it’s also an entertainment activity geared to enrich the lives of these seniors,” Feng said.

Upon Gendu Nursing Home gaining fame, Yu Youfang, Wang Li, and two other familiar faces in the short videos moved to a new nursing home with better conditions. There they carry on shooting short videos with Chen Zhuo, while Feng Yan encourages the home’s other elderly residents also to take part. Together, they are dedicated to spreading the Gendu spirit.

Inside the Elderly

According to data released by China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs last December, by the end of 2022, the number of people over the age of 60 stood at 280 million, making up 19.8 percent of China’s total population. Caring for such a huge group remains challenging. But although civil society has ensured senior citizens’ basic necessities, their inner world is often disregarded, so exposing them to the likelihood of loneliness and depression.

Gendu Nursing Home is one of the country’s many examples of introducing youthful vitality to elderly environments. Shooting short videos, playing e-games, dancing, and wearing traditional Chinese clothes – all such activities formerly in the domain of the young – are hence now taking root in China’s nursing homes. These diverse activities help the elderly to find new hobbies, acknowledge their self-worth, and keep up with the times, thus enriching their inner world and maintaining their mental acuity.

Such nursing homes have explored new possibilities for senior care whose focus is on mental well-being and which imbue tremendous potential. For instance, having seen the short videos shot in the Gendu Nursing Home, many citizens have voiced the desire to live in this uplifting environment upon retirement.

“The videos we’ve shot might be the last ever worldly images of those elderly people. When, after they die, their children watch them they will recall, ‘My parents truly enjoyed life to the full back then’,” Feng said. “That will make it all worthwhile.”