Continued from: Through the Wrinkly Eyes of A Chinese Old Person Part One

The ramifications of this are extraordinary if you think about it, especially in terms of technology. From being in a country where hardly anyone owned a camera, to a country where everyone, including the cleaning lady and custodian, has a camera phone is unimaginable. This all must be inconceivable to these “Lao Ren,” given that in all honesty, the last fifty years in China’s history have proved to be the most economically, socially, and politically tumultuous. You don't really see the hardship that many of these Chinese people endured as they slowly pitter around the lake in their Chairman Mao clothes and wrinkled eyes.

Photo: Andrea Hunt

I love China’s parks in the morning and watching the “old people jungle gyms” on the side of the streets. The patience and serenity they exude as they do their Tai Chi always calms me, as does their coordination and balancing exercises they do, like balancing a tennis ball in long graceful movements on the stiff threads of a tennis racket. The “Lao Ren Jungle gyms” can entertain me for hours, simply because in the cold early morning hours you can see little Chinese old people suspended in air swishing their legs on stretch-inducing walking stirrups. Just like old people everywhere, they are so unambiguous in their beliefs and traditions that the mere idea of an old lady sending an SMS to meet up with her friends for a game of Majiang later is both extraordinary and surreal. Yet there they sit in the city’s most crowded busses staring at the LCD screen show the news or a show during peak rush hour.

Through eyes that have seen everything from war and famine to the televised event of the first Chinese man in space in 2003 or Beijing’s 2008 Olympics, their charming innocence has an almost childlike quality that always impresses me. One particular day, I was on a visit to the famous Summer Palace in Beijing and it was only a few days into January, the coldest time of the year. Regardless of my poor choice of timing to visit one of Beijing’s most spectacular scenic spots, the lake was beautifully frozen over solid and the trees were white with a light fleecy snow. Signs everywhere prominently reminded people in both English and Chinese not to venture out on the ice. I can’t imagine that in the USA old people would want to go out onto the ice, yet here in China, despite surely seeing countless snowfalls, the old people simply ignored the signs along with everyone else and trudged down the icy, snowy steps to reach the frozen lake shore.

Now anyone who knows most American old people realizes that this would not happen in America for several reasons. Firstly, old people in America would not disobey the sign, secondly, they would most likely fear breaking a hip or shattering their tailbone on the ice. Thirdly, they wouldn’t’ probably be outside in the freezing cold on their own without someone keeping them from crazy ideas like walking out onto a frozen lake with ill equipped footgear. Despite the irrationality of this feat, I respect its daring adventure.

Photo: Andrea Hunt

All in all, the Chinese old people have a calmness in their eyes that I hope that I have by the time I am that age. I have seen so many embittered old people, especially in the USA. I love how in China they sit around a fold-up table huddled outdoors because they believe the air is fresh and good for them. I think it’s interesting how they believe every food has a quality, and a time, and a place for eating it. I like how in the small towns, their eyes fill with a curious wonder when they see a foreigner walk by. If you greet them with a simple “Ni Hao,” they are shocked and marvel at your two words of Chinese. The lesson to be learned here is this: you can get old and have seen it all, but never lose your sense of innocence and wonder. I hope that even after I am old and gray, that I can manage to see things wide-eyed, as would a child in the same situation.

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