A Picture of Love

39 years of marriage.

Zheng Yang’s parents are the objects of my envy.

The man is 71 and the lady is 65.

Auntie was an ex-teacher and her family has produced 4 teachers including her. Zheng Yang told me how when people used to call up the Deng house, (they only had 1 telephone line then) to look for any of the teachers, and it wasn’t enough to say “May I speak to Deng lao shi (teacher in Mandarin)?” You had to be more specific than that.

At 65, she’s a woman of incredible energy, going for walks, dancing, managing everything from the sweeping of the yard to the buying of groceries from the market, to accompanying me throughout the day.

Yesterday, she walked from their house at 新街口 to meet me at　什刹海, which is about a 2 km walk. And after that, we walked from　什刹海, to the wet market and then back home again, which is probably slightly more than 2 km. Already, she’s chalked up 4 km of walk in a single day. Suddenly, our health campaign encouraging people to exercise for at least 30 minutes a day seemed incomparable to a 4km walk.

I remembered in September when I came, I got so fed up with the peak hour traffic, I walked from where I stayed to 景山公园to look for a friend of Zheng Yang. It took me about 30-45 minutes I can’t quite remember. It was probably a 2.something nearly 3 km walk because I didn’t go by any shortcuts. I just looked at the map and followed the right angled-directions.

Unless you’re in the hutongs, it’s not difficult to navigate your way around Beijing.

That aside, she was going to make dumplings for dinner and then bring me to watch some dance. So we went to the market to buy some ingredients. The market at night is quite a different sight from it during the day. It seemed a lot busier maybe because it’s dark and those single bulbs hanging over the produce casts a lot of shadows, creating the illusion of many people. Then again, it was pretty crowded at around 5.30pm in the evening.

After we got home, I had first hand experience of what the husband and wife relationship was like. Uncle seems very good-natured. He has difficulty hearing and indulges in bad habits like smoking and drinking. But he’s not grouchy at all. He does things in a more relaxed manner, and I always hear Auntie asking him to do this and that. She entered the little building which is the dining area where Uncle was watching tv, and immediately “ordered” him to help her with preparing dinner. Then there were a series of instructions like bring this to the kitchen, go boil the water, chop up the cabbage etc etc…and she was speaking very loudly because he’s hard of hearing, so as an outsider, it’s like she’s the one wearing the pants in the house.

But the endearing old man never grumbled or retaliated doing as he’s told. Maybe he’s used to it, or maybe he can’t quite hear the tone of voice to think she’s being demanding. I don’t know, but I felt that it was a scene that had a kind of rustic charm to it. I can’t quite put a finger to it, but it was nice as they collaborated to make dinner. She’s more agile, and she gets the chores done quickly. He takes his own time and is ever ready to take on new tasks.

She told me she and Uncle learnt how to make dumplings from her mom after they got married because none of them knew how to cook before and it was time they stopped depending on her parents to cook for them.

It is doing things like this together that really filled the place with love and warmth.

No, let me correct myself, it is doing things like this together for 39 years.

Last night they truly spread the love and I felt it.