EACH morning, 50-year-old Wang Yaqiong gets up early and takes the No. 79 bus to Luxun Park in Hongkou District making sure she arrives before 6:00am when admission is free.

Wang then joins her friends to practise a new song. It has become part of her life since she retired three years ago.

More than 500 elderly residents gather in the park every day, most of them retirees.

To them, the morning get-together in the park is the best part of the whole day and the one they most look forward to.

They enjoy themselves in singing songs from opera, playing the erhu (a traditional Chinese musical instrument) or practising their calligraphy on the ground with a brush.

"It is like a salon where we can meet people and share our hobbies," said Wang, who is a member of a small singing club.

There are over 50 different clubs in the park organized by people sharing the same interests.

"The bars along the Hengshan Lu do not suit us. And the prices are too expensive considering our pensions," Wang said.

Although Shanghai boasts that it has a unique culture that is a blend of West and East, the various need for cultural outlets is not being well met today.

"The elderly and the children are the underprivileged groups in the cultural life of Shanghai. While young people can enjoy their days and nights in bars or entertainment centres, the elderly have to stay home watching TV and preparing meals for the children," said Kuai Dasheng, an expert on culture with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS).

'Grey' hunger

The elderly make up 10 per cent in the population of Shanghai and their number is growing as the greying of the population accelerates.

The elderly also display a great need for a colourful and varied cultural life.

According to a survey by SASS, their need for libraries is a priority with books about literature, health care and (surprisingly) how to feed birds at the top the reading list.

They are also enthusiastic in showing up at different activities. They like putting on performances and taking part in a range of hobbies from fishing to calligraphy.

But the only performance space for them is in parks or the open areas near their houses. For those who live far away from parks, their only choice is to stay at home.

"The cultural facilities are not enough to meet the citizens' need for culture and entertainment, especially ones for the common people," said Zhang Liming, the culture expert with Shanghai Mass Art Centre.

Each citizen in Shanghai has only 0.12 square metres devoted to cultural facilities, which fails to qualify Shanghai as an international metropolis.

The 1990s saw the completion of a number of modern cultural facilities in Shanghai such as the Shanghai Library, Shanghai Museum, Shanghai Grand Theatre and Shanghai Art Museum.

In each residential community there is also a culture centre providing services and organizing cultural activities in the local community.

In Xuhui District, there are five major cultural centres and 287 smaller ones. The cultural centre will allow people to borrow books from their libraries and attend courses or seminars on culture.

The centres are also responsible for organizing cultural activities.

There are 23 museums in Shanghai, compared with 150 in New York.

"In New York, the museums serve as a place of education and entertainment which will stage different kinds of shows and free seminars," said Kuai.

But the museums in Shanghai operate as tourist destinations to some extent.

According Li Hua, director of the service centre at Shanghai Museum, an average of 1,250 people visit the museum every day with tourists making up more than 70 per cent of the total.

The Shanghai Museum was designed to receive 3,000 to 4,000 visitors every day.

"Local citizens do not want to go to the museums, not because they do not have the need but because they cannot see what they want to see," said Kuai.

The number of visitors to the museum can reach 10,000 a day which is what happened when an important exhibition from Egypt arrived last year. Shanghai Museum will bring in two or three such high-level exhibitions every year.

Inadequate facilities

The cultural centres in residential communities also fail to satisfy the cultural needs of the citizens.

More and more people are choosing to move out of the city centre and live in newly-built communities. The old cultural centres gradually find they cannot hold activities due to a lack of people while the new communities do not establish cultural centres.

Most of the cultural centres were suffering from a lack of funds. Without enough money coming in, some of the centres were rented to individuals who opened shops.

Most of the officials in a community centre consist of retired people. It is hard for them to organize activities.

To solve the problem, Shanghai is going to build 100 new culture centres in four years.

With an area of 3,000-4,000 square metres, each centre will be located in a residential area and provide facilities from public libraries to body-building.

The centres will provide services in the fields of entertainment, further education and health care and will charge little money or no money. For example, it costs only 1 yuan to see a Beijing Opera performance.

"The cultural centres will play a major role in creating a good cultural environment in communities and will contribute to Shanghai's cultural development of Shanghai," said Kuai.

Zhang said: "We will adopt new methods to operate the centres."

The centres will be funded by the local governments with financial support of 1 million yuan (US$121,000) from the Shanghai Municipal Government for each centre.

The government will employ independent organizations to take charge of each centre's daily operation.

"There are no such organizations in Shanghai at the moment but they are necessary for good operation and for the development of culture," said Zhang.

At present, the local government is in charge of community cultural activities which fails to meet the real need of citizens.

Shanghai Mass Art plans to launch a training programme for specialists on culture who will work in the centres in the future.

Siolving the funding problem is crucial to building a good community culture. The government is the only investor at the moment.

"More financial support is needed to provide more facilities and more activities," said Zhang.