'The gold is among the silver,' say some businessmen involved with an increasingly ageing society in the world's most populous nation.
Xie Ziguang and Huang Zhongzhou are examples of the possibilities of this nascent 'silver industry', as more and more businesses wake up to just how much money can be made from customers like them.
Xie, 84, spends almost all of his monthly pension of 2,000 yuan (HK$2,270) to rent a single room in the serviced Futai Seniors Apartments in suburban Beijing's Tongzhou district. He does this just so he can live independently and avoid having to live with his son's family in a crowded home downtown.
Huang, who retired this year on his 60th birthday, begins his new jiazi, the circle of 60 years in the ancient Chinese calendar that marks the beginning of a new era.
The former owner of a machinery plant in Shantou , a city in the eastern province of Guangdong, is a big-spending senior citizen in an increasingly affluent country where the stereotype of the frugal grandparent is being eroded.
Huang goes to a suburban resort once or twice a month and travels to other parts of the country and overseas at least one or twice a year.
A tennis fan, he goes every year to watch one of the Grand Slam tournaments - Wimbledon in Britain or the Australian, French or US opens. He drives a BMW 5 Series and goes regularly to five-star hotels for dinner, luxuries he can afford with his handsome bonus from his majority share in the machinery company, which is being run by his two children.
