After the Spring Festival, I caught up with a friend. We ended up talking about his father.
His family had never had it easy. His parents married late, and my friend had finally settled in Wuhan, but the mortgage kept the household tight. His father is 67 and still works as a cleaner in another residential compound. The job isn’t especially hard—he drives a sweeper—and he has told my friend more than once: “You’re still young. We don’t need you to support us. We can support ourselves.”
Both parents are in Wuhan now. His mother looks after the child, while his father works at a different compound and only comes back on days off because the job provides housing. It is the kind of arrangement that quietly proves a hard truth: without an older parent helping with childcare, many men today could not carry a family on one income.
Then one day his father called. The employer no longer wanted him: he was over the age limit. They only hired people under 65. He is 67, but his health is good and he had been doing the job without trouble. A coworker who also drove had accidentally hit a BMW, and the compensation was 6,000 yuan. To prevent anything similar from happening again, the company drew a hard line: everyone over 65 was dismissed.
He told my friend over the phone, sobbing, that from now on he would be a “useless person.” It was the first time my friend had heard his father cry. For years his father had been the strong one.
My friend’s view was more measured: at that age, being let go is only a matter of time. Any of us could face it, sooner or later. What seemed to hurt his father most was not simply losing the income. Earning money with his own hands and spending it himself had given him a sense of freedom and dignity. Spending someone else’s money—or having to ask for it—would feel uncomfortable, even if the someone was his own son.
I didn’t know what to say to my friend. I could only say that his father is a proud man. At 67, he still refuses to lower his head, even though he is no longer young.