A New Home Away From Home.(World Affairs; Finding A Fix)(Shanghai's Yixian Home for the Elderly)

Byline: Melinda Liu; With bureau reports

Novel ways to care for China's army of empty-nesters.

IN China--where Confucian tradition and the communist Constitution still require sons and daughters to look after their parents--adult children risk losing face if they allow strangers to do the job. Yet mass migration and the one-child policy mean that more than half of China's elderly city dwellers are now empty-nesters. And often it's impossible for those who need it to find professional help. While 48.5 percent of aged urbanites surveyed by the China National Committee on Aging (CNCA) last year expressed a need for home nursing, only 16 percent said they had access to such services. And those few willing to live in institutions were hard-pressed to find adequate space.

That's making high-quality and innovative facilities all the more attractive. Case in point is the Yixian Home for the Elderly in Shanghai's Changning district, which is filled to capacity with 300 residents and has 500 to 600 more on a waiting list. The claim to fame for Yixian, founded in 2003, is a system of Webcams, or "global eyes," mounted in public areas such as the restaurant, gym and leisure hall. By going to the Yixian Home's Web site, www.shnursinghome.com, relatives of patients, even in far-off locations, can watch their loved ones eat or take part in organized activities like singing or dancing. Call it guilt- alleviation by remote control.

The Yixian home hopes its computers will help residents as well. It boasts 10 computers for residents' use, and its staff helps patients transmit photos to, and chat online with, distant family members. Octogenarian Ding Ailin, who moved into the home more than two years ago, says she now chats online once a week with her daughter, who lives in Australia. And Yu Deying, an 84-year old former teacher, told local media earlier this year that she likes to sit close to the Webcam so that her granddaughter in Hainan can watch her more carefully. "She saw me having a meal in the restaurant [and] said I look good and healthy," Yu reported.

Of course, high-tech accessories ...