Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the dynamic interplay of care within the supplements market in China, where salespeople and senior customers establish connection that transcend transactions. Within this context, care emerges as a medium through which seniors navigate familial, state, and market relationships.

Paper long abstract:

This research explores how urban seniors in China actively participate in the supplements market as a form of self-care during a historical juncture when traditional family support systems are receding, and once-promised state eldercare services are limited. In such a care vacuum, the local supplements market has stepped in and provided health products, emotional support, and social assistance, all of which I refer to as “care in demand.” These supplementary services, alongside excessively priced health products, extensively fulfill seniors’ desire to be cared for, fueling their aspirations for self-care. Many senior consumers, through their participation in the health product market, undergo a process of learning how to nurture themselves and cultivate self-care attitudes previously lacking in their lives.

During my eighteen months of fieldwork, I focused on senior customers in Zhejiang, China, local inhabitants grappling with the profound impact of globally transmitted commodities, ideas, and cultural practices on their living environments. As the first generation (primarily born in the 1940s) to face solitary lives due to their children’s translocal mobility, these seniors utilize every available tool to plan for a better life. This study explores the transformative nature of care practices in the supplements market in China, investigating how caregiving intentions, initially profit-driven, transcend mere business transactions in practicality. The daily practice of care not only forges fictive kinship between the salespeople and senior customers but, more significantly, reshapes senior people’s perceptions of health, aging, and the societal upheavals they have lived through.