Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Tang Keli, 71, is enjoying his time indoors taking livestreaming vocal music classes every week. Online learning is becoming a trend for many elderly students in China.

"Online classes are really a treasure. I never knew that there is such convenient technology," Tang said, who is a student at Shandong University for the Aged in east China's Shandong Province.

Spirited with a sonorous voice, Tang does not look like a man in his seventies. He has been taking three or four classes online every week since March, and each class takes about one hour. After the class, he will upload videos of his practicing pieces as assigned by the teacher.

Tang said that he used to take a half-hour bike ride to the university, but now he could save the commuting time while getting more constant responses from the teacher and replaying the online classes on the computer for reviews.

"My wife also takes a photography class online. My grandson, a pupil, is also taking online classes and we are even using the same livestreaming platform," Tang said.

"In mid-February, I was told to teach classes online for the spring semester," said Zhou Jun, a yoga instructor who has been working part-time in the university for 12 years. "I didn't have enough confidence to do so because I never tried livestreaming," she said.

In order to complete the unfamiliar task, Zhou changed the furniture layouts at her apartment to make room for yoga livestreaming and prepared opening words to help students concentrate on the class. She even chose bright-colored clothes to make her moves clearly-seen on camera.

Zhou is now teaching five classes with more than 170 students, who are aged between 55 to 70. Some students are quite new in front of the livestreaming app and even smartphone functions, but Zhou is always patient and teaches these gray-haired students how to use their phone and the livestreaming app.

"When a student finally downloaded the app and heard my voice on the smartphone, she proudly said, 'I can also keep pace with the era,'" Zhou said.

"The new semester should have begun on March 2. We have over 730 classes and about 20,000 students, 90 percent of whom are aged between 60 to 80," said Zou Chunxiang, director of the educational administration office of Shandong University for the Aged.

Now over 580 classes have gone livestreaming, and teaching this way is welcomed by elderly students.

However, there was not such a "technological dividend" to keep people's life on track during a public health event decades ago.

In 2003, when Zou started her work, the SARS outbreak ravaged across the country, and many schools had to postpone their new semester for half a year. Today, the Internet and smart devices have broken the limitation of time and space to help people take classes and acquire knowledge at home.

"Livestreaming classes can satisfy the elderly's curiosity for knowledge as well as their eagerness to fit themselves into the modern society," Zou said.

Shandong University for the Aged, established in 1983, is the first university for elderly people in China. The original intention of education for the elderly is to help them make friends and learn new knowledge in late life, said Lyu Deyi, president of the university.

Lyu added that the university would combine online and offline teaching methods to benefit the elderly students with more valuable time and memories in their twilight years.