:: in last week’s Friday Five, I focused on China’s “Post 90″ generation on the Chinese Internet. This week, I’ve decided to take a look at the other end of the age spectrum – China’s oldsters.

China’s Internet population may be dominated by young people, but Chinese seniors have a space of their own online as well. In fact, Baidu.com, China’s leading local search engine, recently launched a special senior-oriented search option that features large text, links to handy reference information like weather and stocks, and a categorized directory of major online destinations that oldsters might find useful. As nice as it is, it’s still a wrapper around a normal browsing experience, and to find individual Web sites specifically targeted at the elderly demographic requires a bit more effort. To that end, I thought it fitting to dig around and take a closer look at the Senior 2.0 scene in China. Below is a selection of senior-oriented offerings on the Chinese Internet.

general ::
The focus of China50Plus is pretty self-evident. It’s a news and information portal for people getting on in years, with a fairly extensive blogging platform and other forum tools as well. China50Plus bloggers post photos, reflections on life, and cheesy animations. And a blog purportedly by 99-year-old math professor Xu Xianyu (徐献瑜) contained posts about his interests, which included poetry as well as math, until he announced he was headed for the hospital in a March post. An English language about page explains that the service is supported by the Gerontological Society of China. Lots of BBSs can be found that target oldsters, but many of them are very low-trafficked and limited to a small community of users. China Seniors Forum (中国老年社区) is a moderately-trafficked discussion forum. The most active sub-boards are Making Net Friends (网友之窗) for new member introductions, and Learning for Seniors (老有所学), where members share information about computer-related topics like Photoshop, Flash, and HTML. “Setting Sun” (夕阳) is a gentle euphemism for aging, so many websites targeted at the elderly will include that in their names. The Red Sunset Forum is a space for seniors to meet people and chat; the most popular sub-forum is a virtual Tea House whose topics include word games and dialect exchange.

services ::
OldKids (老小孩) has blogs and forums, but its main mission is to offer training in computers and the Internet to the elderly. The Web site has a directory of off-line training sessions in skills like WindowsXP (in Shanghai), and offers video courses on the same subject matter. OldKid’s archives also feature entertainment offerings like classic movies and games. Seniors, get ready to experience Super Mario! (well, Luigi’s Revenge). Other websites help seniors with more immediate concerns, like finding places to spend the rest of their years. Older99 is a directory of retirement communities and nursing homes, with a wide range of other categories of aging-related information. Health is another concern, and God of Longevity manages to provide wellness information relatively unscathed by the flood of dodgy ads for drugs and supplements that cover most other health websites. God of Longevity has sub-sites for illnesses, healthy living, emotional life, and friends-making.

nostalgia ::
The Zhiqing (educated youth) sent down to the countryside in the 60s are getting on in years, and there are a number of online forums for them to look back on their younger days. Beijing Zhiqing BBS is aimed at former zhiqing from Beijing and receives a few thousand posts a day. The most popular sub-boards currently are Yan’an, which connects people who spent time in northern Shaanxi province, and Mountains and Gardens, which organizes outings for members. There’s a similar BBS for Shanghai-based zhiqing, which is more art-oriented, and for zhiqing based in other major cities throughout the country. For participants in an earlier period of Chinese history, Love Old Soldiers is ostensibly a website for veterans of the anti-Japanese war, although current active members seem to be mostly younger people. One of the site’s missions is to provide stipends to elderly veterans in need of financial support, as in the case of 58th Division veteran Duan Wenzhou (段文周).

offline activities ::
The Jianchen Cup, an annual exercise competition for seniors, hosts an active BBS on its website. The Cup is co-organised by the Chinese Health Education Association and is sponsored by the Shenzhen health products company King Soldier (深圳市金士吉康复用品科技有限公司), which means a lot of the off-line activities promoted on the site are also in Shenzhen. The BBS, too, is mostly about activities in the local area, such as this post about a the Guanhai Tai dance group. According to rankings listed on the site, the top three interest groups at the moment are Food, Morning Exercise, and Social Issues. (More Jianchen Cup info on Baidu Baike.) Old Cadres Home (老干部之家) is associated with the print magazine of the same name, and provides forums and information, as well as travel planning, products, and outings. And like other age groups, seniors get together through QQ groups set up for organizing dancing and other activities (one for Guangzhou).

companionship ::
Seniors need love, too. Old People Love is a website for senior singles in search of their other half. Users can search by city and availability. Another match-making site In Search of a Spouse is fee-based: VIP members can upgrade to send messages and add friends for 200 yuan for six months or 300 yuan for one year. A thorough help section explains how to log in and register for the benefit of old people who don’t know how to use the Internet (and other information about sending and receiving messages and check private contact details). The Web site also features a BBS. Oldster (夕阳夜话) is a BBS targeted at gay seniors. A photo sub-board is the most popular forum on the site, but photos only show up for registered users. ChGay, a website aimed at a wider age range, has a section for seniors as well as a group for May-December romances.

// AjS

[Friday 5 is the product of my work at Edelman Digital (China). Link here for the full Friday 5 archive. If you'd like to be added to the bilingual (English & Chinese) Friday 5 email distribution list, please send me an email at: adam DOT schokora AT edelman DOT com.]

:: meeting people online is not hard: online acquaintances can be made in general-interest BBS forums, through SNS websites, or over IM software. But finding love in these online relationships might be a little awkward, so a wide range of websites have sprung up to help Chinese netizens meet a special someone to spend the rest of their life with, or just to get together for a quick roll in the hay.

general match-making ::
Baihe is the premier online personals site in China. Founded in 2005, it claims to have reached 13 million registered members at the end of 2008. From its motto (“soul mates finding a happy marriage”) to the services it offers, Baihe is geared toward bringing people together for traditional marriages, not casual dating. The website provides a Soulmate tool that performs a personality quiz and tries to match users up with compatible mates. With its sizable membership, Baihe has large local sub-groups in cities across China so people can find possible matches close to them. Other matchmaking websites are job-specific. 91Fate is aimed at white-collar workers; the website specifies that members must have achieved at least a vocational college level of education. And at Central Meetup (央务鹊桥), the Chinese government has set up a website for single civil servants and party cadres. Aspiring members apply through the government and party employees committee and can then take part in special singles events organized by the website and related organizations. And Shanghai-registered gay portal BoySky has a personals section (阳光交友) that has profiles from men across the country, along with a BBS, chat rooms, and video chat services.

hook-ups ::
Some people may not be interested in long-term relationships. For them, there’s 9yiye (就一夜交友), whose name translates to “Friends for a night.” This matchmaking website is devoted to bringing people together for one-night stands. Newly-registered users are given 1,000 free credits, and the website encourages users to reveal their real personal information and participate in community-building activities by rewarding them with extra credits — 300 for uploading a personal, 40 for revealing a phone number, and 2 for posting a comment — which can be used toward typical SNS services like buying virtual gifts and sending phone messages. In terms of privacy protection,  the website allows users to send emails or text messages to others without revealing their addresses or phone numbers. Anticipating that one-night-stand registration could be used as a tool for harassment, 9yiye threatens to report people who fill in false information to the police. Currently, users are predominately male. There are countless other dodgy BBS forums that get thousands of comments a day in forums devoted to hookups. A random example is Avi4, which divides hookup requests by region and has other sub-forums for adult content and other, restricted boards for edgier stuff like partner-swapping and bestiality (how much of this is more than just for show remains unknown — entrance requires VIP status on the website). The site claims to be registered with the Ministry of Industry and Information in Guangzhou, but its registration number which isn’t in the database, and it’s hosted in the US. This and other sites like it (search Baidu for 一夜情论坛) form a part of the Chinese language Internet unwelcome by the authorities but that seems to satisfy a certain need on the part of netizens.

fetish ::
S&M site SMNei is an SNS aimed at people into S&M. Currently there are 25426 members who can join various interest groups, like “bondage and dripping wax” sex group, which are only open to members. Like other Facebook / Xiaonei knock-offs, SMNei profiles include a discussion board, a message board, a photo album, and functionality for users to seek other people who share their same S&M interests, such as seen in user Zuqiandai’s profile.

non-traditional relationships ::
Asexual Marriage (无性婚姻网) is probably the most well-known website devoted to bringing people together for marriages in which sex does not play a part. It’s been covered in the mainland media as well as in a 2006 Reuters article. The site mentions various reasons for which people may be seeking asexual marriages – no sex drive, a desire for purely platonic companionship, or for medical reasons – but judging from the articles posted on the front page as well as the links bar at the bottom, the website is largely geared toward homosexuals who are seeking a traditional marriage as demanded by heteronormative Chinese society.

video chat ::
Love65 (65经典社区) is a social network site that offers games, stories, and discussion groups but is mostly devoted to video chat. It’s fee-based, and features “dancing,” “KTV,” and “private chat”. A warning banner on video pages says that the platform is solely for making friends, and that members should not tempt video presenters to do anything obscene or pornographic. Similar restrictions appear on other mainstream video chat sites, such as Liaoliao (聊聊语音聊天网), particularly after anti-filth campaigns. Nonetheless, there are lots of dodgier sites, many of which seem to be outright scams, that promote sex chat services. 3ren.com, a platform for building special-interest SNS websites, hosts a recently-launched Naked Chatroom (裸聊社区) to connect people for sex chatting. However, judging from the QQ numbers that get exchanged on other BBS discussion forums, and screenshots that circulate on adult image websites, most naked chatting and cybering probably takes place outside the browser, in IM software applications.

// AjS

[Friday 5 is the product of my work at Edelman Digital (China). Link here for the full Friday 5 archive. If you'd like to be added to the bilingual (English & Chinese) Friday 5 email distribution list, please send me an email at: adam DOT schokora AT edelman DOT com.]