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Lavender Au
Gao Xiangjin once knew each and every call-up of players from American basketball leagues, but since U. S. -China relations deteriorated, daily NBA broadcasts are now much less frequent. Then Gao started watching Chinese men’s basketball, until corruption reports deterred him earlier this year. Now she watches Chinese women’s basketball, not on TV, but on Douyin, the original Chinese edition of TikTok.
Gao, 69, is part of a growing cohort of seniors who have quit TV and turned to Douyin, China’s most popular short-form video app. There are 267 million people over the age of 60 in China, according to official statistics. , and while the Chinese government tries to restrict the use of Douyin among young people, concerned about its addictive nature, many of the app’s regular users are their parents or even grandparents.
“When she’s not cooking, swimming or sleeping, she uses Douyin,” says her daughter Helen. “It’s stupid entertainment. It’s better to play with a cat, it’s better to do anything else. She doesn’t use Douyin. ” “I already have attention problems,” she says. Douyin would only make things worse.
Gao, a former soldier, follows the Israeli-Palestinian crisis and the Ukraine-Russia war through videos made by commentators. He shows me one in which a political analyst headlines English-language media outlets, such as The Times of Israel. others for their research on army strategy.
While the official opinion is broadcast on television, Gao says that on Douyin there are occasionally videos of other camps expressing their views. Censors may get to them after a while, but it’s conceivable to witness a wide diversity of opinions. Some of them speak from an insider’s experience of the Party system, some are academics studying at Western universities, and others reveal nothing about their backgrounds; For many older users, they have the same point of authority.
Douyin is not only the source of Gao’s information, but also basketball shoes. “He’s just looking at those green shoes,” Helen says, pointing to a pair of flashy shoes in a local Tebu logo shoe rack. “They are ridiculous!”
About once every five videos, Gao says, he receives an ad. As you swipe across your phone, there’s a news video, and then a woman seems to promote something, followed by news, news, news, and then a dating ad in Xinjiang. Gao is satisfied with his sneakers and paid just over $27 for them. He says its quality is higher than a pair he bought in Japan for more than 4 times the price.
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Li Yongjian, a senior lecturer at Erasmus University Rotterdam who has studied social media use among other older people in China, says Covid-19 has been a watershed moment. Strict Covid controls have led seniors to seek connections and have turned to social media. Cheaper smartphones and data plans have made it easier for other people to access the world of short-form videos. In the past, older people sometimes avoided expensive devices that younger generations buy without hesitation (or, because of “they think smart things aren’t for them,” Li says.
Today, a 30GB data plus 200 minutes plan from China Telecom costs just $18, and seniors are targeted by China’s biggest phone brands. Li said he bought a Xiaomi phone for his grandfather, which costs $50. With a long battery life, it was billed as “your grandfather’s telephone. “Many apps, including Douyin, were preloaded on the telephone at the start. Li did some research on the app to learn about his grandfather’s hobbies — fishing, the military, and automobiles — so that the ruleset would record those preferences.
His grandfather’s use of the app added other aspects of his life, such as farming, to his diet. Watch videos of other people who lived like him when he was young: how they harvested and then put a pot in the box to start cooking. “It makes him feel seen,” Li says. There’s still a place for them, not only offline but also in the online world. “
Many older people are turning to the generation because in modern China there are few options. It’s tricky to navigate a post-cash society without a smartphone: even those in need and asking for donations on the street have QR codes.
There is also the loneliness that many older people experience, as their children live far away from them, have discovered paintings or have built their lives elsewhere. Possibly they would have uprooted their own lives to enroll in them, wasting the tender ties with their netpaintings and the familiar faces that accompanied them in their daily lives.
Older people who leave their hometown for other cities are called laopiao, or “old wanderers. ” “It’s not in each and every country where grandparents move to another city just to take care of their grandchildren,” says Huang Chenkuang, a ceramic artist in Beijing. Huang’s mother is one of them: she left her network to take care of Huang’s sister’s children.
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This segment of the older population may lead limited lives, moving between only three physical places: where they go shopping, where they drop off their children after school, and their own complex of networks.
Huang’s mom didn’t go far. Originally from Jiangxi, she moved to Zhejiang, a six-hour drive away, and the lifestyles of those two southern provinces are similar. If she had moved to a northern province, “like Beijing, it would have been more complicated for her. “Every time her mother comes to stop at her home in Beijing, she complains about the dry weather and the fact that she can’t afford the food she eats in her hometown. “She’s not the kind of user who can temporarily sign up for other people in a new position and dance with them,” Huang says. Instead, she learned to dance with a Douyin instructor who livestreamed every night.
“All of a sudden I was making a dish that I’d never seen cooked before,” Huang says. Liangpi, a type of flat noodle seasoned with cucumber and vinegar, is not unusual in the South, but his mother gave him the dish. Her mother discovered new hobbies, and with them, smartphone-related habits.
“All the attention is outside of you, because there’s a very entertaining toy there,” Huang says. “Sometimes when I pass by the house, I’m a little worried. I think we may have had more one-on-one conversations in the past. , talking about recent events. As older adults post their own content on Douyin, the generational hole in online anxiety is narrowing. “Sometimes she’ll say, ‘I haven’t used it in several days and I’ve lost fans!'” says Huang. of his mother.
While other apps, such as WeChat, require users to upload friends in order to comment and see their updates, Douyin makes it easy to interact with strangers and opens up the option to get a reaction from other people outside of their usual circles. . On Douyin, any user can comment on a video. Offer recommended “friends” to users based on those who have already uploaded. This makes it simple to upload new people, and once you’re “friends” with someone on the app, you can chat and make video calls.
The app also encourages users to expand their video editing skills. Gao proudly showed me a video in which he took photographs of himself diving into a river near his house, where he swims in all seasons. It was the result of a short five-day video editing course, which he took after seeing an advertisement on the platform. There he learned about camera angles and framing; He wasn’t interested in things that taught how to make money with videos. She puts a bowl in front of him and tilts the phone at him. “I make sure it takes up a third of the screen. “
There are now older Chinese influencers whose follower count exceeds their own demographic. Many others are content creators, if not for money, at least for their own enjoyment and intellectual well-being. We don’t need to forget them. ” For them, Li says, their grandparents are already gone. Li’s grandfather records when his grandson likes his videos. He will ask, “Did you see I downloaded this yesterday?” He says Li. Il needs to know that his grandson cares.
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