On a summer morning, the “New Tai­pei City Silver-Haired Club,” which is sponsored by the New Tai­pei City Association of Retired Persons (NTARP), is festively meeting in the garden behind the Zi­qiang Swimming Pool on Zhong­shan Road in ­Zhonghe District. The old folk are making just as much noise as the children in the pool.

Volunteer leader Dou Wei­lian and cooks Wu Song Gui­rong and Li Feng­mian have been busy since 6:00 a.m., washing and chopping. Before the clock hits 8:00, their breakfast feast is ready to serve.

After taking a healthy walk, the members of New Taipei City’s Silver-Haired Club enjoy breakfast together. The women who ­volunteer as cooks prepare the nutritious and colorful food with great love.

This morning breakfast includes bitter melon and pickled mustard greens, fried eggs with carrots, and minced meat fried with black beans and tofu. One can choose either white rice or salty porridge.

Dou Wei­lian says that they came up with the menu from group discussions, and that the ingredients were bought just the night before. Meals are prepared without MSG and with only a little salt and oil because simply prepared foods better suit the elderly.

The two cooks, who are old enough to be grandmothers, are masters in the kitchen. One used to work as a chef in a restaurant, and the other used to have her own shop selling beef noodles and dumplings. After retiring, and with daughters-in-law handling most of the domestic responsibilities at home, they found themselves with too much time on their hands and nothing to do. New Tai­pei City was launching its program to get seniors to eat together, giving them an opportunity to get busy in the kitchen again. They can’t help but smile when they hear all the compliments about their food and see how people are eating everything on their plates.

“I’m living a life of leisure now and have no career,” says Wu Song Gui­rong. “Instead of sitting at home and staring at the walls, I’d rather come here and cook for people.” Adds Li, “Coming here to sing and chat is a better way to pass your days.”

Some 20 to 30 seniors in their seventies and eighties are here today, in groups of four and five around small tables. With people asking after each other and laughing, it really makes the nutritious food taste great!

Guo Zhen­guo, 87, typically finds staying alone at home boring. Even when it’s raining, so long as it’s not a torrential downpour, he’ll put on his rain gear and head out, riding his bicycle for 10 minutes to get here and join in a group meal. Pointing at a full bowl of rice, Guo laughs and says: “At home I could never eat so much. My appetite is a lot bigger here!”

Wen Gui­xiu, 76, is lively and enthusiastic, but in fact, “At home I rarely open my mouth, and my family wants me to get out more.” They worry about her emotional state. When she comes here and eats with the group, she’s a lot happier.

 

The Silver-Haired Club is one of the organizations under the aegis of NTARP, which was founded by its 57-year-old secretary-general, Tracy Lin, and her husband Peter ­Huang. ­Huang is NTARP’s president, and directs the Forever Young String Band.

The couple, who haven’t yet reached an age that is considered old, have working-age children established in their careers in the United States. In 2008 they decided to close their trading company and retire to enjoy life. But after traveling to various countries around the world, they decided that they should find something meaningful to do.

In 2011, they began to prepare for ageing themselves and returned to their community to establish NTARP, serving people of advanced age as “young seniors.”

“Everything just came together,” says Lin. At first, everybody was walking 6000 paces around the swimming pool for more than an hour each day to stay healthy. Some people started bringing along their own breakfasts. Then it gradually evolved into the habit of everyone eating breakfast together.

Beginning this year, in response to New Taipei City’s call for senior citizens to eat together, the club has expanded to offer lunch as well. They hope that they can eventually stretch to doing dinner too.

Lin explains that they abide by the “user pays” principle. Apart from poor or live-alone seniors, as well as all seniors over 80, most are asked to put payments of NT$35 for breakfast and NT$50 for lunch into a donation box.

“Some seniors are comfortably off and simply don’t care how much a meal costs, and they put extra money in the box,” says ­Huang, pointing out that the beautiful experience of sharing meals is priceless.

Lin, whose entrepreneurial streak hasn’t dimmed, has taken a businesslike approach to operating the club. The modus operandi is a lot like a model developed by “social enterprises,” whereby people give what they can.

“We hope to reproduce what we’re doing here in other communities,” says Lin. The association board has already approved the idea of expanding to 10 locations in the Yonghe–­Zhonghe area. The first two service stations—Jian­kang and Anbang—opened in August.

 

The movement aimed at getting seniors together to eat group meals is gaining steam. There are already more than 300 community locations like this one operated by NTARP, where seniors get together to eat. Among them are hundreds of different models.

For instance, Lu­zhou District has integrated local cuisine into its “benevolent local eateries” campaign. The district government has created a convenient map that clearly indicates where the group meals are taking place. Seniors can use it to figure out where they can go to eat. Various restaurants—including Ah­lang’s Noodles, Little Boss’s Squid Soup, Da­jia’s Original Authentic Beef Noodle Soup, and Zhen Xian’s Stir Fry—offer discounts for senior eating groups.

San­chong’s ­Chengde Community has taken a “Love, Feast, Share” approach, largely pushing Grandma’s home cooking. On the first Thursday of every month, the community’s mothers and grandmothers each make a dish and bring it in for community seniors to enjoy. These include fancy dishes such as wolfberry-and-red-date drunken chicken, as well as taro and prawn.

Even more unusually, Xi­zhi’s Bo­jue Mountain Villa community invites police officers to come and share the feast. The community is a bit far from shops, and young people leave for work early and come home late, making it extremely difficult for seniors to get meals. Consequently, the ward chiefs urge area people to regularly take group meals at the local police station. It’s both convenient and safe.

Without a hint of proselytizing, St. Theresa’s Church in Wanhua has become a place where seniors gather to play mahjong, sing, have their blood pressure checked, and eat together. In the center of the photo is Father Marcel Goffart, who is Belgian.

Tai­pei City has also been actively promoting group meals for seniors.

In order to encourage more social welfare groups to participate in these group meals, the city government’s Social Welfare Department has provided the incentive of NT$10,000 in assistance to sponsoring organizations, which can be used to purchase simple dining equipment. In a short time frame, regular group meal venues have been set up in each of the city’s 12 administrative districts. St Theresa’s Church in Wan­hua is one of them.

On Tuesdays and Fridays, volunteer chefs at St. Theresa’s cook lunch. Today four or five tables have been set up in the activity center. Old folks are talking and playing mahjong. Some of the elders are busy flipping through song books, waiting for their turn on the karaoke machine.

“The blue, blue sky. The white, white clouds. Those good old days, of everyone holding hands and walking toward nature….” Chen Guang­hua, who is 100, sings with as much feeling as ever.

Wang Xiu­zhi, the secretary-general of the church, points out that for two meals a week the monthly charge is NT$300. Lower or middle income seniors can eat for free.

­Zhang Hui­fen, 89, has a beautiful head of silvery hair and a mischievous smile. “By being content and not dwelling on the unfairness of life, you can pass your days more happily.” Such is her secret for staying young forever.

Widow ­Zhang lives with her youngest son’s family and has all of life’s necessities. The problem is being alone when her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren leave for work or school. Every Tuesday and Friday she comes to St. Theresa’s to visit with old friends, play mahjong, sing and eat. It’s become a joyful part of her life that she can’t do without.

Without a hint of proselytizing, St. Theresa’s Church in Wanhua has become a place where seniors gather to play mahjong, sing, have their blood pressure checked, and eat together. In the center of the photo is Father Marcel Goffart, who is Belgian.

The Catholic service at St. Theresa’s is administered by Father Marcel Goffart, who has been serving God in Taiwan for 49 years. In the blink of an eye, the strapping Belgian youth has become a 76-year-old man.

Getting on in years himself, Goffart joins the meal whenever he has the time. As a long-standing member of this community, he knows the family backgrounds of all those participating as if they were his own.

Wan­hua is the area of Tai­pei he loves the most. “This is old Tai­pei. There are a lot of cultural sites here, and also a lot of elderly folk living alone who need our help.”

He explains that eight years ago the church began to understand the needs of local elderly and to change its approach, clearing some space for group activities so as to get the seniors to come out and play mahjong or sing.

“Eating together is a bridge toward caring,” says Goffart. The joint meals have something of the effect of a roll call through which it is possible to gain an understanding of the situation of old people in the community. If seniors suddenly stop attending meals, volunteers give them a call. “Last winter there was an old man we lost touch with despite repeated attempts to contact him,” says Goffart, sighing and shaking his head. “By the time they found him, he had already passed away.”

Watching people in their eighties and nineties playing mahjong, singing and eating to their hearts’ content, one senses that the load on society’s shoulders has lightened a bit.

Without a hint of proselytizing, St. Theresa’s Church in Wanhua has become a place where seniors gather to play mahjong, sing, have their blood pressure checked, and eat together. In the center of the photo is Father Marcel Goffart, who is Belgian.

After taking a healthy walk, the members of New Taipei City’s Silver-Haired Club enjoy breakfast together. The women who ­volunteer as cooks prepare the nutritious and colorful food with great love.