Chinese community locks out dancing grannies

A forest of lockable bollards, designed to protect parking spaces, has sprung on a vacant lot in northeast China's Jilin Province, in an effort to stop unruly elders from dancing the night away.

The 50 anti-parking devices have been strewn almost randomly across an open space in the Yongchangmeiyu Community of Changchun City, the provincial capital.

Chinese square dancing is very popular with the elderly. Dances can be launched anywhere at anytime; all you need is a ghetto-blaster and some friends, though passers-by often stop and join in. Groups of dancing elderly ladies are a common site at dusk all over China. Aging flashmobs take over subway exits, parking lots, shopping malls and even rain carriages or the expressway.

Yongchangmeiyu residents say the loudspeakers disturb their lives, but the dancers refuse to turn down the volume or find a new place.

"They dance from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. every night. The music is so loud that we can still hear it even when we close our windows," Qu, community resident, told Xinhua, adding that he had failed sleep well for the past year.

Qu said calling the police was no use. The noise is so bad that some people who could not bear it had sold up and left.

Conflicts caused by dancing have caught plenty of people's attention in recent years.

A man in Beijing's Changping District allegedly fired a shotgun in the air and unleashed three Tibetan mastiffs to scare away a group of women whose dancing annoyed him. The man was arrested, said a Beijing newspaper last October.

According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, people age 60 and over account for around15 percent of China's population, higher than the United Nations 10 percent threshold for an "aging country".

In an urbanizing China, it is not easy for so many retirees to find entertainment venues without affecting others.

"Dancing is good for you, of course. If they would shorten the time and turn down the volume, most people in the neighborhood would accept it," said Li, another resident.

Many places including Hefei City, Anhui Province and Shaoxing City, Zhejiang Province have already issued regulations to allow dancing for a limited time, in non-residential areas and at a proper volume.