Meet Granny Sunshine.
She's one of the most successful models in Chinese online shopping.
She's 71, and she can pose for 100 photos per minute.
Her posing is amazing.
But I wanted to talk to her because her success, in a youth-dominated industry like fashion,
is a sign of some big changes that are transforming China.
China is turning gray on a scale the world has never seen.
In about 30 years, China's population over 60 will peak at almost 500 million people.
Countries around the world are getting older,
but in China, decades of the one-child policy have resulted in especially drastic demographic change.
What happens when one of the biggest workforces in the world gets old?
I'm Isabelle Niu.
This is Quartz.
These are the results when you search for clothes for women over 60 on Taobao.com,
which is kind of like China's version of Amazon.
The results go on for about 100 pages, and Granny Sunshine is in almost 90% of them.
Well, she has a real name.
Today's shoot is all about sweaters.
She'll try on more than 150 of them.
Yang says she actually had to educate the brands who hire her about what people her age like and don't like.
The market for the clothes Yang models is growing because of a change in the population.
She's part of China's post-war baby boomer generation, born between 1946 and 1964.
It's the largest baby boomer generation in the world,
and in the next few years, the entire generation will be of retirement age.
That's a group with a lot of purchasing power.
Hu Zhan is a social scientist at Fudan University who studies aging populations.
By 2030, one estimate says the total amount spent by people over 65 in China will reach $2.8 trillion.
That's seven times what it is now.
Hu predicts that a silver economy boom will hit China in about five to 10 years.
But in one city, it's already here.
- I'm in Shanghai, the most cosmopolitan city in China.
It's also the oldest. One in three residents here is age 60 or older.
This is one of the most lucrative sectors of the silver economy. Retirement communities.
About 1,600 people live here. The average age is 78.
In the West, retirement communities like this have been around for a while. But it's a relatively new concept in China.
And it's catching on fast.
Chai Keyue is 74 years old.
He sold his apartment to move here about eight years ago.
Chai's story is a major change from the longstanding expectation in China.
Traditionally, the elderly are cared for by their children at home.
But decades of the one-child policy have transformed the Chinese family structure,
creating a whole generation of "4-2-1 families," with more older people than young people.
In other words, more older people to care for, and fewer people to care for them.
And in the future, as lifespans increase, that could get even worse.
But Hu says the diagram only tells part of the story.
That's because China isn't just getting older, it's also getting richer.
Decades of economic growth have allowed the newest generation of elderly Chinese to accumulate wealth.
Especially in wealthy cities like Shanghai.
But China's hope is that that prosperity will eventually come to the entire country.
And that means the way China thinks about its old people is going to have to change.
Currently, China sets a mandatory retirement age of 60 for men and 55 for women,
and retirees are discouraged from rejoining the workforce.
And this isn't just true in China.
Populations are aging around the world,
which means seniors everywhere are increasingly able, and eager, to be included in society for longer.
But the tendency is still to think of senior citizens as a problem. A drain on society.
The global trend of increasing longevity presents a chance, not just for China,
but also for the whole world to rethink old age.
For the hundreds of millions of Chinese people just entering their golden years,
the role they get to play might be a blueprint for how societies get old in the future.