10月4日是九九重阳节，让我们把目光投向可敬的老人吧。该如何度过人生的最后岁月，可谓是“仁者见仁，智者见智。”由于东西方文化认知的不同，选择的生活方式也不同。该文作者试图对此作一评析，希望能给我们的老年朋友带来一些启迪。

　　The Double Ninth Festival falls on the ninth day of the ninth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, and it is also known as the Chong Yang Festival.

　　The main activities that we enjoy on this day include making trips to the country, hiking, walking up hills with dogwood, looking at autumn in bloom and paying respect at the graves of our ancestors.

　　Since nine is the highest odd digit, people place two of characters for“nine”together to signify longevity. Therefore, the ninth day of the ninth month has become a special day for people to pay their respects to the elderly and a day on which the elderly particularly enjoy themselves.

　　Xiamen is a perfect place providing for the aged because the elderly can live such a carefree and leisurely life here. People show great respect to them and offer many convenient establishments and services.

　　However, the way you treat yourself and the way you enjoy your life are the most important things in life. San Mao, who was a famous woman writer in Taiwan, has written an essay called“Such a Life”about foreign elders' lives in the 1970s. Perhaps her work is of some interest to us.

　　In the essay, the elderly are living in a warm island located in the Mediterranean Sea to the south of Spain. At an early point in her life, the writer thought that all the elders were wordy, pitiful and lonely but once she came to know them, she got along with them very well and could not help to appreciate their attitudes toward life.

　　An old man was living alone next door to the writer. He had a wonderful garden and planted all kinds of flowers all by himself. The writer often talked with him about gardening.

　　Here is a piece of their dialogue, illustrating the difference between East and West opinions;

　　W(writer): Don’t you miss your dead wife?

　　O(old man): Oh, Youngster. Everyone will step on this road. I do miss her, but the Gods do not want me to leave the world, so I have to live on happily. Or my children will worry about me.

　　W: Don’t your children take care of you?

　　O: No, they have got their own things to do. I live alone but I do not find myself useless. Why should they have to take care of me?

　　This is a different philosophy from China. We have a saying“raise sons for parents’late years”showing that the relationship between parents and offspring is tied up, maybe too tightly.

　　It's commonly held that Chinese parents are the hardest workingsgroupsin our society. They do everything for children, expecting them to be extraordinarily successful. Many of them have to go on with their work even after retirement. Some of them look after grandchildren while some of them are busy running about, dealing with offspring’s matters. Although some of the older folks do not have to do such things, they might live alone, feel sad all day and look forward to an occasional family gathering.

　　In the above mentioned essay, the elderly were living alone, but they never feel lonely. They frequently held small parties for the whole community. As they are from many countries over Europe, they communicated with others by playing their folk musical instruments and singing old songs. They still danced as gracefully as when they were young. They enjoyed the fun times as if they would have another spring at the end of their life.

　　It was just because they loved their lives so much and arranged their lives appropriately and wisely that they created the wonder of a flowery lifetime.