Day Sixty, March 23, 2011

One hundred and four years old! Can you imagine?

I met this beautiful lady in a little alley in Shanghai today. It was a very beautiful, clear, and sunny Spring day today and almost everyone I met was reflecting the warm sunshine.

I stopped to speak to this lady who was sitting quietly in the sun next to a few young ones (in their seventies) who were rolling papers for the Confucius temple near by. They all smiled and were very eager to tell me that she is 104 years old as if they were showing her off to the world. She just stared into my eyes for a while and did not complain at all about my camera. I let her see her image in the screen, to which she just smiled softly while the young ones giggled.

I simply cannot fathom what experiences her face has seen with the different chapters of China’s history unfolding in front of her eyes, and to then have this strange red haired weiguoren (foreigner) point a silly thing at her face to record her image.

Moments like these make me love life and give me so much inspiration…