>But neighbours complain it has gotten out of control, with competing groups blasting their music over each other in small areas, and bullying those who try to intervene. Viral videos and reports have shown the groups arguing and fighting with basketball players to take over their court, or, in one case, breaking into a football field and stopping the game to dance in the space, prompting a police response and arrests.
>Some disputes have escalated to violence.
>“Most of them are the products of the Red Guard era, they don’t respect society or the environment,” said a young Chinese resident of Guiyang, who did not want to be named.
>“Square dancing is a problem left over from history. Many elderly people feel that the whole China is built by their generation. They have the absolute voice and status. We young people have done nothing, and of course are not qualified to question them.”
>“I tried to communicate with them once, but the police stopped me,” said the Guiyang man. “They thought I was going to do something bad. You know the golden rule of Chinese policy: the larger number of people matters. Everything is based on social maintenance.”
Hardly sounds like a "really good" part of culture to me.
"China is home to an estimated 100 million dancing grannies. Square dancing allows older women, many of whom live alone or with younger family members who they accompanied on a move to the cities, to socialise. They form strong bonds, often shopping or doing other activities, including group investments, together, the South China Morning Post reported"
are most likely very, very high and almost certainly underestimated. The kind of social security that comes out of having these kinds of relations well into old age probably saves society an incalculable amount of resources compared to the risk of social and financial isolation if these women could not meet.
Maybe find a way to make the grannies a little less militant but you would be straight up foolish to not encourage the elderly to socialize.
I'd argue it's you who's underestimating the social and capital damage those gangs of elderly people hogging public places can cause to the working population.
It's apparent that had it been youngsters stirring up such racket in the name of "social benefits", they would have promptly been squashed. You can't just go and disturb and/or deny access to public places to other people just because you need to "socialize", it's just unfair.
The complaints I have heard have been very careful to separate the exercise, which is fine and good, from the excessive noise level during sleep time, which is not.
The article doesn't give a good sense of what proportion of that public is causing issues. Of course it's going to be easy to cherry-pick problematic behavior on that kind of sample size.
I'd bet the damage is nearly impossible to underestimate.
If only I'd thought of that line in junior high gym class. Of course, it would probably just have earned me twenty push ups and an even worse reputation.
In the US my local parks and public spaces have exercise groups (of all sorts), music events, kids activates, farmer's markets, ... events OFTEN.
The fact that there is so much space might make it seem like some are empty, but there's always something going on near me.
But it's almost never with loud music outside the dedicated music events that have spaces for just that.
Unless you are the dancing grannies, apparently.
And a FM transmitter is what I would go for.
In the US it's kind of "event" based. Like you have a farmer's market once a week for a few months... or a local yoga teacher offers weekly classes in the park to drum up business for their studio.
I've never seen seniors congregating in public spaces in the US like I have in various cities throughout China. The closest I've seen may be "mall walkers" who will show up when malls first open and wander around together... but it pales in comparison. It makes me wonder if we've ruined ourselves with our idea of individualism or something.
More lots of little events scattered all over the place. Events daily but they might be different.
If you don't 'go' to the park too it's not always obvious, but they're there.
I cannot understand the underutilization of public spaces. That's very far from my experiences but it may just be regional.
I have no idea what you mean about "many things become a financial transaction".
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...
Lots of people in the US who feel there are no public city services often just don't realize the services their city already provides or are unaware of how to use them. Even in my city which has absolutely wonderful city services, I often find friends and neighbors completely unaware of the things which exist. We have busses running all over my town but I imagine if you asked any random person if they knew any local bus route they would have no idea where to even begin.
My feeling is, it's harmless here. I wouldn't presume to tell the Chinese what they ought to do about it over there.
American cities aren't God's finest work, but I'm curious: have you actually spent any time in Chinese cities and if you have, how much time have you spent in second and third-tier cities?
> ...you get exercise...
Exercising in toxic air is of dubious benefit.
From all I've heard the chinese work week is challenging enough as it is, even without noise pollution on top.
There are many ways to socialize and build community. Why do they need to pick this specific way?
Chinese cities have much much less park spaces compared to the US. This is one reason for this to happen.
Another reason is the Red Guard generation does not care about the concept that you should not annoy other people in a civil society.
Another reason is that religion is severely suppressed by the CCP, so those retired people have nothing to do and no community at home.
Yes, but isn't the soccer style sport the anti-social behavior as far as space usage is concerned? A future generation of retired soccer players not limited by the one-child policy wouldn't need any other groups to fight with over land use.