Rugao Residents Live to 100 on Simple Daily Habits

Rugao (GNP): In Rugao, a city in China’s eastern Jiangsu Province, about 31 in every 100,000 people live to 100, and average life expectancy stands at 83.12 years. The city is known as a World Longevity City.

The figures arrive on 1 October, which is both China’s National Day and the International Day of Older Persons. They put a spotlight on how ordinary people in Rugao reach such ages.

Gao Tingkuan, 105, gets up at 5am, rides his tricycle to buy groceries and cooks for himself. Zhang Mingde, 96, still washes the dishes, waters the flowers and tidies his home each day.

Residents also fill their days with cleaning, audiobooks, tea and ball games with friends. These simple routines reflect what is described as proactive health, where wellbeing is built into daily life rather than left to medicine alone.

That view matches the opinion of Michael Levitt, a 2013 Nobel laureate in chemistry and a professor in Stanford University’s Department of Structural Biology. He said healthspan is a complex issue shaped by social and behavioural factors as well as by lifestyle changes.

In his list, healthy living means eating well, drinking little, not smoking, spending time in nature, exercising and keeping friends. Levitt made the remarks in an interview at the 2026 Collaborative Innovation Conference on Disease Prevention Research and Translational Achievements.

Laboratory work points to a biological side of the same question. A team at Xiamen University, led by Chinese Academy of Sciences academician Lin Shengcai, has studied anti-aging for more than a decade. Its latest findings suggest that lithocholic acid, a product of gut microbes, may activate a pathway linked to a longer, healthier life.

The team examined why hunger switches on longevity-related genes. In mice fed 70 percent of their normal intake, blood levels of lithocholic acid rose more than tenfold after a period of hunger.

According to the team, the substance helped repair muscle damage and improved stamina in older mice. In longevity tests, it extended the animals’ lives by about 5 percent.

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Beyond biology, Ren Yuan, a professor at the Population Research Institute of Fudan University, said longer lifespans should be seen as a positive development. He described people as creators of wealth, guardians of social order and participants in a well-functioning society.

Ren added that gains in longevity reflect wider social progress, driven largely by science and technology. In his view, higher economic development, stronger healthcare systems and better social welfare are the foundations of human lifespan and health.

Levitt said, “Some determinants of healthspan are not medical.”