"We can not buy many things with 60 yuan a month. The price of flour, edible oil, meat, eggs and rice have all gone up," said Liu Zhiping, a villager in Yishui county of Shandong Province.

The 64-year-old plants three mu of crops. He has no other source of income. With the basic pension not going very far, he struggles.

Lu Jiehua, Professor of sociology at Peking University, blamed inadequate fiscal investment and the economic and social development gap between cities and the countryside.

"Governments at various levels have long been paying more attention to elderly care in cities rather than in the countryside," said Lu.

Shandong has 10 million rural people aged over 59. But it only has 1,852 nursing homes with 242,340 beds, nearly 2.4 beds per 100 elderly people. This is half the international standard of five beds per 100 elderly people.

The conventional preference for support at home also hinders the development of elderly care services.

If older people are sent to nursing homes, their children are then seen as unfilial.

Nevertheless, the Chinese government wants to see improvements in elderly care services in the countryside. The issue is becoming more prominent in an aging society.

In a guideline unveiled in mid September, the State Council, or China's cabinet, ordered lower-level authorities to increase investment in elderly nursing services in rural areas, and to attract private investment.

"The improvement in rural elderly caring services needs not only more government investment, but also a careful design of sustainable multi-models," said Prof. Lu.

The Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), which concluded last month, approved a package of reforms that allows rural residents to transfer and rent land.

The rural population will be awarded more property rights by allowing them to sell land use rights and the new source of earnings could help some finance their elderly care, said Gao Liping, a researcher at the Shandong Academy of Social Sciences.