A reader commented: older people with a strong sense of hierarchy will keep insisting on their mistakes to save face.

If someone is stubborn and unwilling to learn, the wealth they worked hard to accumulate over a lifetime may gradually be drained away in old age as society turns those habits against them.
(Squandering it themselves.)

Illnesses caused by unhealthy habits eat into your savings. Salespeople’s smooth talk, health products supposedly able to cure every illness, so-called free tours, Xiao Zhang and Xiao Li’s solicitous attention, wealth-management products with dividends, universal life insurance, revising the family genealogy back in your hometown, loans to relatives, and so on keep making you reach into your pocket again and again.

In the end, the money is gone, your health has broken down, family ties have fallen apart, and even your children resent you. This may be the tragedy of old age for many older people in China.

Even in my teens, I often heard about scams targeting older people. At the time, I could never understand it: the tricks were so simple, so why did people keep believing them and fail to guard against them? Those grandfathers and grandmothers did not look stupid either.

Yet it seemed that a few offhand boasts from a scammer could make them mistake even a white radish for a ginseng fruit.

Looking back two years after leaving China, I slowly began to understand that many things were not simply a matter of being easy to deceive.

I increasingly feel that many people’s lives seem to have been designed for them long beforehand. Within a particular environment and system, they have developed a set of ideas that cannot be questioned.

As they grow older, stubbornness and the desire to save face make it even harder to turn back.

Sometimes it is not that they cannot see the trap ahead. Admitting they were deceived means admitting that their judgment was wrong, and even that what they have believed for decades might also be wrong.

For them, that is harder to accept than losing some money. So even knowing it is a trap, they keep jumping into it. They can keep spending money, but they cannot admit a mistake. Otherwise, how could they save face?

Even highly educated intellectuals, even professors, are not necessarily exceptions. Education level and willingness to keep learning and reflect on oneself are two different things.

No matter how highly educated you are, that does not mean you can let go of the fixed belief that “I cannot possibly be wrong.” What leaves me feeling helpless is that this is not merely an issue with one person’s character; it affects the majority. Its causes are closely linked to the environment and system that shaped them.

Even when it comes to my own parents, relatives, and friends, I cannot help worrying that they will eventually meet the same fate.

But gradually, I have stopped discussing these things with my elders. It is not because I do not care. Often, you think you are helping them avoid a trap and earnestly try to persuade them, but they feel you are making them lose face. All I can do is respect their fate.