At S.F. senior home, 100 year-old students meet 1,000 year-old poems

"Clara Hsu, a renowned Hong Kong-born poet and executive director of the Clarion Performing Arts Center, began teaching the course in 2019 to residents of the Bethany Center, an affordable senior housing community in the Mission District. To some, the layered meanings found in these poems may seem obscure. Yet for the elders, all of whom are women, they are absorbing. "I don't get many chances to learn new things these days," said one 91-year-old, by way of explanation."

"Hsu teaches the class in Cantonese, the only language that her students speak. Many of them came from the Canton area of China to the United States one or two decades ago to help care for grandchildren. She has found them to be a "high-functioning" and fiercely independent group. "They like to have their own community," Hsu says. "Do their own stuff.""

Clara Hsu teaches classical Chinese poetry in Cantonese at the Bethany Center, an affordable senior housing community in the Mission District. The students are all women aged roughly 85 to 100, many having immigrated from the Canton area to care for grandchildren. Hsu selects several hundred Tang and Song dynasty poems, prints them in large font, and distributes them in folders. The elders respond with focused attention, recording lectures and discussing imagery such as mountains, maple leaves, and bright moons tied to lunar festivals. The group values independence, community, and continued learning despite advanced age.

Read at Mission Local