| In2007, Peng Shan was recognized by the Gerontological Society of China (GSC) Association as "The Home of Longevity in China"; it has become one of the first "the Home of Longevity" officially named in China at a national level.Peng Shan has a long history of longevity. The Peng ancestors had been living in this land over eight hundred years, and created a system of healthy life and longevity culture through personal research and practice which laid a solid foundation for Peng Shan being the significant birthplace of the longevity culture in China. In addition, Peng Shan is also the "No.1place of filial piety and longevity"-the Western Jin Dynasty Scholar Li Mi’s hometown. His writing fully and sincerely expressed the true feeling of filial piety to respect the elderly. It had a profound impact on the people in Peng Shan of being good-neighborliness and filial piety as well as played a very important and profound social role in forming Peng Shan a regional phenomenon of longevity.The Peng Shan longevity is very unique. In comparison with Ma Yang County, Yong Fu County and the latest Chinese longevity Zhong Xiang County of Hubei Province, Ba Ma of Guangxi Province, Peng Shan doesn’t have the unique natural environmental resources which the others have. Therefore many people and even the researchers think that the good health culture with uniqueness of sex life are factors contributing to the longevity in Peng Shan.The escalation of aging population along with the Peng Shan geographic phenomenon of longevity increasingly draw attention from the society in general, and many scholars and researchers have used Peng Shan as a role model to find the resolution to resolve the aging issues. However, many research and analysis on Peng Shan longevity only emphasized on the natural environment and medical factors, and lack of research and analysis made from the demographic and sociological perspective. The World Health Organization believes that lifestyle is the most important factor in affecting and restricting people’s health and longevity, and it takes up to60%of the total effect. Lifestyle is an important sociological theory category, and its content is fairly broad that including people’s daily necessities, food, housing, transportation, job, entertainment, social network and contact etc. as well as the related values, ethnics and aesthetic standards of the material and spiritual life. In other words, under a certain period of historical and social conditions, lifestyle is also the living mode of various ethnic minority groups, social classes and community groups. This paper is based on research needs and set up the lifestyle as:people unfold the lifestyle to live and survive effectively in the areas of family life, work and consumption, leisure and entertainment, and social network. The questionnaire is designed based on the aforesaid four areas to analyse the Peng Shan elderly lifestyle. The purpose of survey is to understand the reality of Peng Shan elderly lifestyle, analyse the causes and methods of their healthy long life, refine and promote the law of longevity so as to provide the society with a practical healthy longevity pathways.Through the survey conducted on the elderly over60years old in Peng Shan, we discovered that Peng Shan elderly have the disciplinary dietary, regular living habits and customs, and are content of their present life. They insist on doing house chores, taking exercise, working as long as still alive, visiting neighbours, mingling with friends, having a pleasant life and getting plenty of sleep. Their lifestyle is scientific and reasonable as well as keeping good living habits. Peng Shan elderly have a harmonious sex life, and36.69%of elderly believes that sex life is very important to their daily life;29.3%of Peng Shan elderly still have sex life. Nearly half of the elderly people said that they are still very close and have a good relationship with their spouse. Due to the obscurity of the sex topic, in fact the Peng Shan elderly already provided us with an expression of their sex life satisfactory. On the other hand, through the survey we found that Peng Shan County had realized the State’s basic health services by offering nine free programs to the urban and rural residents of the County as well as establishing and perfecting a new model of rural cooperative medical system. The medical facilities exceeded the basic requirements of the national average. The County’s basic old age security pension is100%distributed to the qualified elderly, and a monthly payment of the old age security pension is also applicable to the landless peasants and urban unemployed workers. The local government pays￥720Yuan a year of low income supplement to all elderly60years old who meet the minimum living standard security system. This relevant health and social welfare system to a certain extent ensured the needs of the elderly are resources for medical benefits.During the interview with the centenarians, almost every family was talking about the importance of filial piety. Many elderly said that they wouldn’t have lived long and healthily without being taken good care by their children. The value and culture of filial piety is the most essence of traditional Chinese culture and it advocates harmonious relationship and respects elderly. It plays an important and active role as well as profound impact on the longevity in Peng Shan.Based on the research of the Peng Shan elderly lifestyle, this paper believes that the formation of Peng Shan to have many centenarians and over hundred years old elderly living there attributes the regional longevity phenomenon to good scientific lifestyle, well developed health and social welfare system as well as traditional filial piety culture. The natural environment and genetic factors are the "innate hardware" which can be transferred and duplicated to "healthy software". It provides realistic and practical guidance for the society and public to live healthily.The21st Century is an epochs of enhancing and developing quality and substance of human life, and our country is entering a high-speed development of aging population in the scale of millions increase every year. How "time of life" to let the elderly live longer and healthier have positive and significant practical and theoretic value to relief the burden of social security system, to reduce the pressure of421family structure as well as to realize the active aging. Excellent natural environment is conducive to live longer, however, the individual lifestyle, social health and welfare system and traditional culture factors are crucial to influence and restrict the health and longevity of people. Therefore, the law of longevity originated from the Peng Shan elderly lifestyle is:lifestyle+health and social welfare+traditional cultures=the law of longevity pathways can further the effective development of health and longevity and promote a "fair share" of harmonious society construction and development.Around the main stream of research, the paper layout on seven chapters as follows:Chapter One-Introduction. The background information is based on the domestic and foreign research and the population development, the phenomenon of longevity and health in Peng Shan. The paper puts forward the main purpose and importance of this research. At the same time it puts forward the basic theory, research framework and research methodologies of this paper.Chapter Two-Summary of lifestyle research. This chapter focuses on summarizing the domestic and foreign lifestyle research as well as providing details on the concepts and characteristics of the elderly lifestyle. On this basis, the basic theories and concepts of this paper are clarified and defined.Chapter Three-Peng Shan elderly lifestyle survey. This chapter provides an overview of the structure of the Peng Shan elderly lifestyle survey indicators and the use of survey methodologies. At the same time it puts a lot of emphasis on the design of the questionnaire content, as well as the details on conducting the survey and a comprehensive illustration of the progress of the survey process.Chapter Four-The basic description of Peng Shan elderly lifestyle survey. According to the first-hand information obtained from the on-site survey, and mainly using the statistical methods of Peng Shan elderly lifestyle for inductive analysis in the areas of basic living about marriage and childbirth, education and income, diet and sleep, social psychosocial aspects etc., direct and truly described Peng Shan elderly living status including their sex life. As well, interprets vividly the reality and healthy life of the Peng Shan elderly through the face to face interviews with centenarians.Chapter Five-The law of Peng Shan elderly lifestyle analysis. This chapter is constructing on the basic analysis of Peng Shan elderly lifestyle, focusing on straighten out the methodologies and regularities of how the Peng Shan elderly live, and analyzing the effectiveness and influences of Peng Shan longevity from two perspectives-social environment factors and traditional cultures. When analyzed Peng Shan longevity, it also crossed reference Hong Kong longevity phenomenon to derive a Peng Shan longevity model that is depending on the three key elements:moderate scientific lifestyle, a relatively complete medical and social welfare, and the traditional culture of filial piety.Chapter Six-The inspiration of the law of Peng Shan longevity. This chapter inspires the ways and means of the law of Peng Shan longevity, and the elaboration of the law of Peng Shan longevity gives individuals and groups (refers to the role of government) for references. It also resolved the major issues arise from the healthy development of longevity accordance with an annotation of the law, so as to build a harmonious successful aging society as well as to provide specific implementation methods to alleviate the impact on aging population.Chapter Seven-The conclusion and outlook. This chapter mainly summarizes the basic viewpoints of the paper, especially affirmed the propagation of traditional culture and promotion of Dynamic Senior Industry which play an important and effective role in realizing longevity. It also believes that through further research, enhancing cross references, as well as targeting and refining the law of Peng Shan longevity, will be able to greatly promote the entire society active aging, and effectively advance the comprehensive and proper settlement of the problems of aging society. |
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