Teng Jiaqi, vice-president and strategic investment general manager at Fosun Integrated Care Group, said more than 8,000 apartments in such communities had been introduced in Shanghai in the past two years.

"The figure is tiny compared with the entire real estate market, but we predict that there will be explosive growth soon," he said.

Seniors can either spend millions of yuan on buying an apartment in a continued care retirement community and pay a discounted service fee, or about 15,000 yuan ($2,200) for meals and service each month, industry insiders said.

Chen Yuyu is managing director of Starcastle Senior Living Investment and Operations Group, which operates the community that is home to He and his wife.

Chen said developments in the retirement community market in recent years have been similar to those in the hotel industry over the past two decades.

"We didn't have four- or five-star hotels back then ... we used to have guesthouses only. But now the hotel industry has matured as a result of market-based development," Chen said.

She said the development of continued care retirement communities will take less than two decades, as the population is aging fast. The number of people in China age 60 or older reached 241 million by the end of 2017, accounting for just over 17 percent of the total, compared with nearly 17 percent in 2016.