Taiwan Is Hiring More Foreigners To Care For Its Elderly. Does That Clash With Filial Piety?

On an island where the foreign caregiver population has ballooned from just 306 to over 214,000 in three decades, some families, upholding Confucian values, remain hands-on in caregiving.

- Yip Wai Yee

TAIPEI - Indonesian caregiver Astuti is preparing lunch for her elderly Taiwanese employer, and she is set on making it as mushy as possible.

The 26-year-old mashes silken tofu and mee sua in the wok until the mixture looks like white pulp.

"Ah Gong (Grandpa) cannot chew very well, but he likes to eat noodles. So this is what I do," the Java native said in halting Mandarin.

Cooking is just one of the many things she does as a live-in caregiver to Mr Tong Fu-chien, an 86-year-old who has kidney disease and dementia. For the past 1 1/2 years, she has cared for him in his New Taipei City home, where he lives with his 52-year-old freelance television producer son, Mr Tong Shih-chieh.

After the senior Mr Tong wakes up, Ms Astuti - who like many Indonesians goes by one name - helps him from his bed to the living room couch before bringing him his toothbrush and cup.

Later, she records his blood sugar and blood pressure levels before administering his daily dose of insulin. Three times a week, she wheels him to a clinic for dialysis.

"She's yi ji bang," said the elderly Mr Tong, using Mandarin slang that means "first-rate".

Foreign live-in caregivers like Ms Astuti are crucial in supporting Taiwan's rapidly ageing silver population amid a declining birth rate - a trend seen across East Asia.

But in a society heavily shaped by Confucian values, they also serve as surrogates practising filial piety, stepping in when children of the elderly are unable to take on care work themselves.

"In Taiwan, it's widely understood that the responsibility of caring for one's parents should be kept private, within the comforts of one's own home," said the younger Mr Tong, who hired Ms Astuti to care for his father when his own commitments began to pile up.

"As my father's only son, it's only right that I do it this way."