In late 2009 I learned about a remarkable story. It is the story of a couple who lived in Shandong province, told by their son Jian Bo, a renowned photographer, who works at China’s State Council News Office where he heads the Art Photo Library. In 1974 he began to record with his camera the life of his parents. In December 1998, a collection of these photos became the subject of an exhibition at the China National Art Gallery. His parents were there to cut the ceremonial ribbon whereby the exhibition was declared open. The exhibition was celebrated by the media as one that “moved the capital and stirred the entire nation”. That year, Jian Bo’s collection of photos was awarded the grand prize in an international competition of photos documenting traditional folk life and customs.

In the spirit of these pages — to tell my cnounters with and the stories of ordinary Chinese people — I’ve decided to publish this story here. I’ve attempted to contact Jian Bo to ask for permission to do so, but have not received a reply. I hope that when he finds out he won’t object to my sharing his story with all of you.

To view the original Chinese version, please follow this link. Jian Bo’s blog site is here. (为了看看原中文版的故事，请点击这个链接.)

And now, here is the story of Jian Bo’s parents….

My mom, all 141 centimeters and 32 kilograms of her, is a tiny woman. Her [Chinese zodiac] sign is that of the Ox.

My dad is a sturdy man with a pair of stubborn eyes. His sign is that of the Rabbit.

This picture, the earliest of my dad and my mom, was taken in 1974. He was 60 years old then, she 62.

When I took my first photo of them they looked, oh, so solemn and serious.

On this small rural road, my dad and my mom walked together for 70 years. They were born in the same village, one on the east side, the other on the west.

“A bit higher, higher, higher, do you hear me?”

Really, the older they get, the more they become like children. When they smile like this they are too adorable.

Every year at Chinese New Year time, my mom would sit on a large rock by the entrance to our house, hoping her son would return home.

Each time I had to leave home, I would ask her not to send me off and she would promise not to, but more often than not, when I reached the end of the village and swivelled my head around, she’d be right behind me after all.

Our home sits outside the southern gate of the old village wall. This wall was built in the 6th year of Qing Tongzhi [the 8th emperor of the Qing Dynasty, 23/3/1859 – 4/7/1875]. Nowadays the village wall is all but completely destroyed. In recent years, the owners of the houses that used to be near the village wall all have built new houses on a sun-facing hill outside the old village, but my dad and my mom won’t leave their old home.

In accordance with the traditions of the mountainous region of Shandong province, my dad and my mom have all their lives slept toe-to-toe.

When my father pricked his finger at work, my mother, wearing her eye glasses, would help him remove the thorn. My dad, in pain as she worked to remove the thorn, would shout at her: “You’re not removing the thorn, you’re digging a hole, you’re digging a giant hole, as if you’re trying to uproot a tree.” In response to which my mom would say softly, “I’m old, you know, my eyes are bad, I can’t see clearly any longer.”

My mom had her feet bound at the age of 6. When her toe nails grew long they curled up like a snail, and my dad helped her to clip them.

On July 4th, on the day of their 68th wedding anniversary, my mom gave my dad a whole-body wash and helped him clip his toenails, too, because they wanted to spend this day very, very clean.

My dad in front, my mom behind, he was the head of the family at all times. Every day from early in the morning, they would work busily together until nightfall.

She would obey his command without fail, even though on occasion unwillingly.

When once my mom was upset with my dad and fell ill, he found a way to hang up a drip-feed bottle and worked particularly hard to take care of her: he not only boild water but also cooked all meals [which, given the traditional household they had, spoke volumes about just how much he loved her].

Around Chinese New Year one time, my mom suddenly developed an emphysema. She had to be hospitalised in order to save her. My dad, alone and lonely at home, couldn’t get his spirits up at all while my mom was in hospital.

Whenever my mom fell ill, my dad became a “barefoot doctor” [A part time non-professional medical worker in China's rural communities in the 1960s and 70s.]

When my mom fell seriously ill, the members of our family relied on traditional marriage customs to attempt to rid her of her illness. A flower-decorated bed sheet wrapped around his body, surrounded by all my aunts and pulling behind him a red silken cloth, he entered my mom’s room by crossing over, in one step, a horse saddle that was placed at the door step. All the while, he sweetly spoke to her: “I stride across this door step and this saddle, and with that your health will soon return.” [According to a tradition in China, striding over a doorstep symbolises a marriage overcoming all hurdles; and stepping across a horse saddle means that a couple’s life will be without mishaps thereafter.]

“Lets see if she’s got a fever” is what my father said as a pretense to preserve his dignity, but in reality he just felt like kissing her.

On the 15th day of the first lunar month that year, my mom’s condition worsened. She was not only afflicted by emphysema, irregular heartbeats and pneumonia, but also tormented by shingles. Certain that she would soon pass away, my father decided to take her home such that they could spend more time together: “I’ll take care of her during her remaining few days; at least, in my heart, I will feel better for it.”

On the 16th day, the doctor surmised that she had but two hours to live. My family hurried to wrap her in traditional burial clothes and tidied up her deathbed. All the neighbours rushed over to be with her as she passed away. And so we all remained, waiting and watching her. After two long days of being in the land between the dead and the alive, she returned to recover slowly.

After my mom’s health had improved a bit further, my father impatiently went to visit her in the hospital. As he entered her room, he wiped away his tears. “In 68 years, this is the first time we haven’t spent Chinese New Year together,” he said sobbing.

After the Qingming holiday [a lunar calendar holiday that falls on a day in April] when warm weather had returned with spring and the flowers had begun to blossom, my mother’s health improved yet further. At the beginning of May, she suddenly and miraculously rose from her bed and returned home from hospital.

My father very much likes this photo. When someone falls ill, the whole family is distressed and full of sorrow, he says. After that person recovers, looking at this photo makes one feel cheerful again. We call it “悲喜相生” [“gloom and happiness can’t exist without each other”]

After my mom had fully recovered, the two of them couldn’t of course sit idle; instead, they returned to working on the farm. My dad often said, “Mother, your feet were bound, you can’t walk fast”. But more often than not when they walked together dad ended up falling way behind here.

When working on the farm cutting grain sprouts, my mom would look like a statue while my dad, holding a hoe firmly in his hand, would stand upright like an iron tower.

On sweltering summer days, my parents would close the door of their house and then give each other back rubs. My mom would say, you dad giving me a back rub is a recent thing; when you were young you’d never have done that.

My father was a carpenter. All their lives they’d work together like this without saying a word, but tacitly understanding what was required when.

When my father broke his leg, he still had a bad temper and wouldn’t allow anyone to feed him.
At Chinese New Year times, the whole family would gather together. My mom would kill chickens and slaughter sheep. Despite being madly busy around these festive days, she would say, “Wah, I’m dead tired, but it is all worth it!”

While digging up fresh wild vegetables to cook a tasty meal, my mom would say: “When I was young and we went hungry every day, we used wild vegetables to fill our stomachs. These days wild vegetables are just used for flavour!”

My father, together with his nephew, continued to take on the responsibility of sowing millet and sorghum seeds. In the mountain region of Shandong at that time, farmers would still use a certain farm implement [shown in the photo] that would require special skills to work: walk a bit, shake it a bit, shake it faster or slower in order to control how many seeds would be sown. My dad, still acting with a seriousness becoming an old general setting out on a campaign, could never get himself to entrust this task to younger folks.

“Mom, still working the fields?” I would ask.
“Of course I do. I live and therefore I work, what else should I do? This is how I grew to be 84!” came her reply.

In autumn, they’d harvest ripe bottle gourds, saw them in half, put them into a large pot and boil them slowly into a pulp which made a lovely meal, and they would use the shell of the bottle gourd as a spoon for scooping out the pulp. It’s more economical and easier to use than an iron spoon, they would say.

When our family had just installed a telephone in our home, my father wanted to try it out. After he dialled the number, my mom picked up the receiver and asked, “How come there’s no sound?” Then she complained that my dad didn’t know how to dial the number.

My dad and my mom tidied up their home by hanging up photos of their offspring; for them this counted almost as much as having a reunion. [And I can’t help but wonder who hung up the photo of the shapely woman in the background. PAS]

“Hey, grand pa, I sweep the snow away in one direction, you sweep in the other. Let’s see who’s faster!” his granddaughter Jingjing said in jest as they held a snow sweeping competition.

My father was a boorkworm. Every free minute he would spend reading magazines and newspapers. Whenever he learned of something new, he would go out and tell his friends about it. And when he found work of mine published in a paper, he would look at it over and over again and hurry to tell my mom about.

Through his life, my father didn’t get to climb Mt. Tai in Shandong province [the eastern-most of the 5 sacred mountains in China; the others are Mt. Hua in Shaanxi Province, Mt. Heng in Shanxi Province, Mt. Heng in Hunan, and Mt. Song in Henan]. Late in his life, clasping a picture of his grandfather, he at last climbed to the very top of Mt. Tai.

“Watch out! Be careful!” my mom would say. They always cared for each other as couples who marry out of love do.

Having lived together for tens of years, this photo reveals, as they both lean against the same pillar, that their behaviour had in fact become as one.

This Han cypress tree, it is said, was planted at the time when emperor Han Wudi (in 110 B.C.) bestowed upon Mt. Tai the honour of being one of the five sacred mountains. By now it is more than 2,000 years old and called “The First of all the Han Cypresses”. My dad and my mom kept walking around and around this tree and couldn’t take their eyes off it.

Hand in hand they came to Beijing’s Tian An Men square one day.

When my dad and my mom climbed Mt. Tai together one day they met two young lovers.

“Until you reach the Great Wall, you’re not a proper person goes the saying. Now we are,” dad said to mom.

A couple from Canada was deeply impressed that my dad and my mom, always holding hands, had climbed this far onto the Great Wall.

Sitting on the subway my mom and my dad would say, “It’s all great, except for you’ve got no idea where you’re going.”

We bought this handycam with the intention of giving to our children, but my dad and my mom upset the plan.

When my mom turned 85, me and my older sisters bought her a huge birthday cake and stuck green candles in it. We all crowded around her and sang “Happy Birthday”. Then we let her come close to the candles to blow them out, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t manage. Only after we all helped her did she succeed. My mom then mused, “My mouth used to be able to blow out a fire, how come today I can’t even extinguish these few candles? Because I don’t have any teeth any longer, my mouth leaks air. That’s why!”

When my son left home to become a research student at Beijing University, my mom exhorted him to do this and not that, over and over again.

This is a family group photo. My dad and my mom gave birth to eight children. Four died. Four remained: myself, my idiot elder brother, and my two elder sisters. My elder surviving brother was always my parents’ greatest worry.

In my village, all the ladies of the same age as my mom had their feet bound. Those a bit younger than them had their feet unbound after a while [probably after 1949] and their feet grew to be neither small nor large. We called theirs “sweet potato” feet. My mom added, “My feet were bound at the age of six; even if I had wanted to unbind them then, I was already too old for that.

In the field, me taking a photo of my mom working as usual.

My dad, clasping her hands, recited a heartfelt poem for my mom: “咱手把手儿把话拉..” [a phrase from a famous play, it simply means “together we chat and pass time”.

On their 70th anniversary they came to Beijing for sightseeing. That was also the first time they sat in an airplane. My mom was rather nervous and wouldn’t let go of my dad’s hands.

My mom asks, “At this old age, can I still wear bright red clothes like this? “Honestly, it looks great; it looks great. It looks just like the one you wore when we got married,” my dad replies.

“Mom, you’ve held and cared for me all my life; now let me hold and care for you.” This photo was taken by my wife at the Gugong Palace in Beijing in 1996.

And so I watched my dad and my mom grower older and older, year by year, day by day. Since I hated to see them go, I eagerly recorded as many moments of their togetherness as I could in the hope of preserving their lives forever. When they turned ninety, I took this photo of them. I didn’t know then that it was to be the last of just the two of them together.

During Chinese New Year in 2002, I took a photo of a congregation of their whole village. My dad and my mom are in the front row. By then they were my villlage’s oldest couple.

When my father died, his body passed in front of my mom’s room as he was carried from the hospital. Even though she’s said not to have seen anything, at that moment it seems she did notice something. Later on, when my family told her that my father went to Beijing for treatment, she replied,”I hope he’ll be alright over there.” And then she continued looking at her bed sheet without saying another word.

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Besides having left us a beautiful memory of his parents, Jian Bo’s story also suggests something else - in this day and age when what we want to and need to learn seems to come from anywhere but our parents, perhaps we could learn more from them than we think.

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