My father, his neck and the 21 housemaids

Complaints

My parents, like most people their age, like to compare today's ayi with the fiercely devoted maids who were around them in their childhood.

Almost always when I was at my parents' place they would have a lot to say about ayi, some of it good, but most of it bad. In turn the ayi would complain that my father had a bad temper.

Eventually, I was so worried about conflict that I felt I could not leave Beijing longer than seven days.

According to a report from the Ministry of Civil Affairs there were 222 million people aged 60 or above in the country by the end of last year, 16.1 percent of the total population. The report says that the country has about 116,000 nursing homes with a total of about 6.7 million beds. That means there are little more than 30 beds for every 1,000 senior people.

It is obvious that in addition to the healthcare programs for the ageing population there is huge demand for nurses and home-stay ayi .

I am unsure how long my father will stay in the rehabilitation center, but whenever he returns home there will be more ayi hunting to do. A pretty robot called Jiajia was on display in Tianjin recently, and I am beginning to think "she" may be a candidate as housemaid No 22.

I once joked that when I retire I will set up a firm to train ayi. The beauty of such an idea is that if I ever need care myself I will have plenty of talent on tap, knowing that if I have been responsible for their training, if they have to look after me I will be in very good hands.