The countryside is so vast, must it be only for playing mahjong?

Not long ago, when I returned to my hometown, I found that several more mahjong parlors had opened in the village, and most of those playing mahjong were left-behind elderly people. The owner of the mahjong parlor said that the elderly have nothing much to do at home, so they come over to play mahjong and relax.

Playing mahjong itself is a form of leisure; when fellow villagers gather together, as long as it is not gambling, there is nothing wrong with relaxing and building relationships at the same time. However, mahjong becoming the dominant or even the only leisure activity is not necessarily what the elderly want. Some elderly people have expressed their helplessness: they want to play table tennis to keep fit, but there is no equipment; the village also has a reading room, but the books on the shelves do not suit their taste and are covered in dust……“If not for mahjong, I really do not know what to do.”

This phenomenon is actually quite common. According to statistics, by the end of 2014, China had more than 200 million people over the age of 60, and more than half of them were in rural areas. With the increase in migrant workers going to cities, the proportion of empty-nest elderly in rural areas has clearly risen, and their longing for spiritual and emotional connection and their need for cultural life are more urgent than ever. Facing the elders who have toiled for a lifetime, whether it is the government, social organizations, or their children, everyone needs to think about how to give left-behind elderly people a little more care and how to do more practical things to enrich rural cultural life.