The waiting list for a bed in a public elderly care home in Beijing now can be 25 years longer than the average lifespan of a resident. 
Cao Shujuan, deputy director of the Beijing No 1 Social Welfare House, said about 10,000 are queuing to get enrolled and "the number keeps growing". 曹书娟，北京第一社会福利院副院长
The house with about 1,100 beds in the fourth ring of the city's north part, is one of the two five-star elderly care homes entitled by the Beijing municipal bureau of civil affairs in October.
"We may not have the best facilities, our advantage lies in services that seniors care most about," Cao said, adding the house has a geriatric specialty hospital and 100 nursing staff.
"Once enrolled, seniors can live here until they pass away," she said.
"Since they have been taken good care of here, their sense of happiness increase and they live longer, our beds' turnover rate is very low annually."
The center charged its dweller 1,500 yuan ($240) to 2700 yuan for a bed per month according to the suite' size other conditions, according to its pricing leaflet in Oct.
"More than 10,000 people on the waiting list and the care home only enroll a few dozens or 100, it takes 100 years to be enrolled," Beijing Evening News quoted an anonymous source as saying. 
Liu Yuqin, in her 60s, the director of Dongzhimen Community Nursing Home, said her nursing home is very popular too as all its 26 beds are full while about 100 people are on the waiting list. 
The small public nursing home provides accommodation services and daily care for elderly people in the region since it was opened in Beijing's downtown in 1996.
"We are thinking of expansion but it's difficult to get land."
Beijing's population aged 60 and above doubled to about 2.5 million in the past decade. However, the megacity now can only provide about 28 beds for every 1,000 seniors.
Therefore, government-funded care home for elderly, synonym for low price and quality service, end up with unprecedentedly long waiting lists and beome out of reach for for ordinary people.
Xiang Zhengwei, 82, who lives in Anhuili No 2 Community with his 78-year-old wife, said that it is difficult to find a suitable nursing home.
“We applied for the Fifth Social Welfare Institution of Beijing five years ago but we were told that we need to wait for ten years for a bed in the institution,” Xiang's wife said, adding they are still queuing.
The couple's two daughter live overseas.
Xiang, who suffer from a brain trauma and his wife has high blood pressure, had hired a housekeeper who returned hometown for the coming spring festival, or China's lunar new year.
The couple said that they want to move into a nursing home that is close to hospitals because they need to see doctors regularly.
They digged around and found out that Beijing’s suburban areas have such kind of nursing homes but they charge more than 5,000 yuan, which is higher than the couple can afford.
The couple said more than 60 seniors living in the same building with them who are also too old to take care of themselves.
“I heard from my old friends that in many communities in Beijing, elderly people could enjoy lots of services but that's not the case in old communities like ours,” said Xiang's wife.
Li Wanjun, an official from the Beijing municipal bureau of civil affairs, said although the government has speeded up building more nursing homes, many lack of quality services and well-trained nursing staff. 北京市民政局党委书记李万钧
"We will make more efforts in improving community-based care services for the old so they can spend their aged life at home," he said.
The municipal government's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011 - 2015) mapped out a strategy to enable 4 percent of its aged population, who are physically or mentally challenged to live independently, go institutionalized by the end of 2015 and the rest enjoy nursing service at home and in communities.
Du Peng, director of the Gerontology Institute at Renmin University of China, said public nursing homes should prioritize enroll low-income seniors with poor health conditions. 杜鹏，人大老年学主任
"First come first service is not a good way as some healthy elderly may live in public care homes and it leads to waste of public resources," he said, "public care homes should give priorities to accept those poor, sick and lack of family members to take care of them."
Zhu Ping, who works for a day-care center run by a Japanese company in Beijing, urged the government to provide more subsidies for elderly to afford nursing services. 朱平，日资老年护理公司职员
"The government has heavily funded public care homes so their prices are lower than private ones, it's unfair competition and those public care homes can only benefit a small number of people," he stressed.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2013-01/18/content_16135828.htm