Freezing Point Special Issue No. 1213
The silver-haired daughter becomes a "mother" to her mother
Like all family members of dementia patients, when we felt that something was wrong, my mother had already lost her former grace under the attack of the disease:
When I was busy with work in 2007, sometimes I received several calls from her in a day, and they all said the same thing;
The cooking pot at home, the pot handle became "disabled" because she forgot to turn off the fire;
Leaving the key at home, she hit the door and went out for wandering;
It seems to be sitting on the sofa and reading the newspaper carefully, and after a closer look, it turns out that the "Reference News" is head down...
She is no longer a student who reads the wrong form and handed in papers in advance when entering college, and she is no longer a strong woman who speaks fluent French and worked abroad for Xinhua News Agency. She is a 77-year-old man with a worrying brain decline. Mrs.
We can only go home more to accompany her.
The river in Zizhuyuan opened, we took her to smell the breath of early spring; the cherry blossoms in Yuyuantan opened, we pretended to go to Japan to enjoy the cherry blossoms; Jingshan Park is full of choruses of middle-aged and elderly people, let’s also go to see the prosperous fire. See if she can also open her mouth; in the streets around the yard, we take a different path every time we walk with our mother...
I took her to color, play checkers, and do Sudoku; I pretended to help her write letters to friends, and I even took her to see her first love boyfriend!
Under the dim street lamp that day, the old man crouched and walked out. He saw his mother and took her hand.
Seeing two old people walking in front of me staggering hand in hand, I was heartbroken and moved.
But my mother has already lost the ability to talk to him...
She can't do without the closet
After dementia developed to the middle stage, my mother couldn't do without the closet beside the bed.
Once, I took my mother, babysitter, and the three of them took a taxi to my house.
At night, she lay in a clean, soft quilt, looked at me and said, "I am not used to sleeping outside." Then she whispered and wanted to go home.
At that time, it was past 9 pm.
But seeing her posture, I was afraid that she would not sleep all night, so I had to get her to get up and put on clothes, call a taxi, and then send her home.
One round, spent 200 yuan.
The nanny said that she doesn't have a wardrobe to clean up in your house.
Mom has started to empty the closet, at least two or three years, right?
First, hide the passbook, hide the ID card, and hide the money.
"Red Lantern", the Japanese devil Hatoyama once said: "A communist member can't find anything hidden by 10,000 people." This is really true.
In the end, my mother couldn't find the salary discount she hid!
Of course, she would not blame herself, but suspect that someone had stole it.
After we used the "bitter meat plan", "tune the tiger away from the mountain plan", "buy one get one free" and so on, so that she finally accepted the babysitter, the living expenses will be handed over to the babysitter every week by me, and my mother actually no longer needs any money.
At the beginning, she would still think of calling me to ask for money, so I changed the big bills into small bills and gave it to her.
She took a pile of money, thinking it was a lot of money (she couldn't count it), and hid it again in a certain area with satisfaction.
Gradually, my mother no longer took the initiative to call me, I knew she had lost the ability to call.
Occasionally, she would say, "I don't have any money anymore," but she forgot when she finished speaking, and would never remember to ask me for money.
The mother, who had no money in her hand, started another hiding game, which was to tear the paper into pieces, hiding it in the closet, under the pillow, or even stuffing it on her body.
When we bathed her, when we undressed, she would fall out like snow flakes.
Even in the middle of the night, she took the toilet roll paper to the bedroom, teared it up and hid it in the closet next to the bed, "Jianbi Qingye".
If tearing paper or hiding paper like this makes her feel at ease, let her tear it.
Sometimes, I cooperate with my younger siblings: one person gives her a bath, and the other quickly opens the closet and throws things out!
My mother can’t stay at my home because she can’t do her “work” of turning over the closet here. This shows that she can still realize that she is in my home. She has not completely lost her self-awareness and has not lost anyone/me Isn’t that fortunate to have the ability to distinguish between?
go home
My mother's "traveling" days are getting more and more.
During the walk, my mother’s words were particularly interesting: obviously walking on the road in Beijing, she pointed to the building beside the road and said, “I did my homework behind that when I was young”; she said she was in the liberated area just now, and she went to Paris in a blink of an eye. , Not to mention that her clothes were bought in Paris, which wiped out our filial piety (in recent years, we bought all her clothes for her).
I don't know when it started, my mother always talked home.
Sometimes it’s a pleading tone: "Go home!" Sometimes it’s a commanding tone: "Go home!" Sometimes it’s a hesitant tone: "When... go home?"
When talking about going home, most of them are in her "home".
She lived in that compound for almost 50 years and moved three times, only from one building to another.
She has lived in this house now for 25 years, and the furnishings are no different from when her father passed away.
But she is still talking about "going home", where is the "home" she wants to go back to?
While she can still walk, while her brothers and sisters are still alive, we will take her back to her hometown in the south!
See if the familiar local accent, delicious food on the tip of the tongue, and hometown features can recall her memories.
I finally got through the high-speed train from Beijing to Suzhou. My uncle has already sent a car to pick us up.
As the car drove into Changshu, I kept telling my mother which road and street we were on, and asked the driver to speak to her in the native dialect. Most of the time, she sat in the back seat silently, as if this place was in harmony with her. She has nothing to do with her.
During the four or five days in Changshu, I still couldn't confirm whether my mother knew that she had returned to her hometown.
In Fangta Park, old classmates chatted in their native dialect.
Suddenly, my mother said a hometown dialect to Aunt Lin.
Once I was walking under the Yushan Mountain and walked to the newly built library in my hometown. Looking at the big characters "Changshu Library", my mother seemed to realize it, and said to herself: "I'm in Changshu!"
The little cousin got married and invited many relatives and friends, including the neighbors in my old house.
A middle-aged woman came to her mother and said to her: "I am the daughter of the'Three Girls'!"
"'Three girls'?" Mom immediately got up and shook hands with each other enthusiastically, "Are you okay?" At that moment, although maybe my mother mistakenly regarded the third girl's daughter as the third girl, she was happy and passionate, obviously Has been connected to the past, the lost childhood.
"Going home" may have become a "metaphysical" meaning for my mother, rather than a specific "metaphysical" concept like returning to hometown and the place where I lived in my childhood.
Even, she would have forgotten where she is in an instant, what is the meaning of "going home"?
But isn't life made up of "moments"?
There was a "moment" of returning home in my heart. Isn't it exactly the same as not?
Isn't this "moment" a grain of gold in my mother's desert-like heart?
On the day I returned to Beijing, having breakfast at the hotel, I saw some freshly cooked small wontons, and my heart moved suddenly, thinking that I should ask my mother for a bowl.
Small wontons are the most common food in my hometown. They have a thin skin and a tender soup. The extremely thin skin makes pleats in the soup with green onions, like fish tails swinging.
Silk was born in the south of the Yangtze River, and people gave it the name "Crepe Wonton", which is very famous.
Who knows that when I opened my mouth, I choked with sobs: "Cook a bowl of small wontons, maybe this is the last time my mother has eaten hometown wontons."
"Separation" and "Integration"
Every day, I took my mother's hand and wandered in the community like two wandering souls.
Looking down to see the newly blooming flowers in the flower garden by the roadside, I was moved by the beauty of nature; I looked up and saw palm-like sycamore leaves growing wider every day, and I was full of wonder at the power of growth.
I was always excited to point out my findings to my mother, but she was not surprised or delighted, and her face was unmoved, as if the beauty of life had nothing to do with her.
In the evening, under the light, I took out an iPad or paper crayons, hoping she could doodle at will and discover the joy of creation.
But she hesitated and then hesitated, even if she held the pen in her hand, she would not let it down.
Occasionally, I flicked a stroke or two, and I saw a slight surprise as the wind at the end of Qingping quickly passed over her face, and quickly disappeared between the wrinkles.
Then, she froze there again like a sculpture, no matter how I said "Mom, look, this is your painting, it's so beautiful", she has little motivation to try again.
I actively "spy", hoping to use my curiosity to open the storehouse of her memory.
But the two of us, one seems to be Mohican, and the other seems to speak Swahili:
What is your favorite place in Paris?
go to bed.
Do you like Geneva or Paris?
For the first time, the eldest sister didn't know where she went.
What do you think of Yunnan?
There are a lot of materials in it, students.
What kind of student?
Beautifully written.
Who writes beautifully?
pork.
Where did the pork come from?
Some teachers say "intellectuals..." (laughs)
What happened to the intellectuals?
One by one.
What is one by one?
Take him...follow his studies...stole away...
Where to go?
(She becomes impatient) Are they all newly bought? (Pointing to the distance)...
I can vaguely feel that under the bricks of words such as "big sister", "material", "steal", "student", "beautiful" and "intellectual", the past of my mother is buried, but she has lost it. The blueprints of life cannot connect them and become meaningful things.
On May 1st in 2009, the nanny who took care of my mother took leave and went home. I had to take care of my mother for 8 days around the clock.
Sure enough, I discovered that my mother also has the "Sunset Syndrome" mentioned in the book "Smart Caregiver".
"The Book of Songs" has a saying: chickens live in the ridge, at the end of the day, sheep and cattle come down.
It's fine now, at the end of the day, my mother is angry--every sunset, my mother gets into a bad mood and has to lose her temper.
If you ignore her, she will yell at her, or pat the table and bed vigorously.
I remember one evening, when my mother scolded "what's the matter" during the episode, I cried sadly.
Fortunately, I have a bit of psychological knowledge. I know that this kind of emotional change may be related to the dimming of the light causing the inner anxiety of patients with dementia, and even a kind of brain biochemical reaction, which is not her intention.
When my mother started to attack again the next day, I no longer "claimed" my mother's abuse.
I became emotionally stable, and it seemed to have a certain demonstrative effect for her. Her screams were much lower and the attack time was much shorter.
I summarized and shared with friends in the group.
The first step, I call it "psychological separation", that is, when the patient swears, you must not "claim", and don't be foolish to take their angry words seriously.
The second step, which I call "physical separation", is to leave him/her under safe conditions and let them stay alone for a while.
People with dementia feel that they have lost control of their lives, and they have a lot of frustration, anxiety and fear. Anger is actually transformed from these feelings.
There is a saying in psychology that "anger is not the first feeling" because they have already felt something else before being angry.
The third step is to "listen actively".
When he/she calms down, give them a chance to talk.
Half of the words "separation" and "fusion" are the same-"鬲" is an ancient cooking utensil, shaped like a tripod with hollow feet-perhaps it means that the caregiver needs a large, large Mental space, let's accept dementia patients.
Touch mom
I feel wronged sometimes, especially when she pats the door and bed to express her dissatisfaction.
Although I knew that this was a manifestation of her illness, the flame in my heart was still "cang".
I was saying in my heart: "I sacrificed my life to accompany you, you don't know how to cherish it!" Suddenly, I felt uninterested, depressed, and never wanted to be with my mother anymore...
I don't know when I can transcend this grievance.
I can seem to hear countless people teach me this way:
She is a patient, and you cannot treat her as a normal person.
She is your mother, she gave birth to you and raised you, and now she is sick, you should put everything down to accompany her.
How long can she live? What can't you let go of your life?
I hate these seemingly correct sounds.
I'm not a saint, I can't stand this kind of accompaniment that has nothing to do with things, pretends to be patient, talks with ducks, and never ends.
I want to read, I want to write, I want to prepare lessons, I want to have spiritual communication... Why should I sacrifice my creativity for a spiritually desolate person?
Grieved, really wronged.
I don't know which day I can really practice to let go of my grievances and be a good "mother" for her wholeheartedly?
However, I had to work hard to play the role of "mother" and treat her like a child, such as sleeping.
On the single bed where she usually sleeps, I chose to lie opposite her, not only because of the small size of the bed, but also "with ulterior motives": so that I can touch her legs and touch and pat her gently , So that she feels at ease, will not "make trouble."
I just touched her thin ankles so gently. Whenever she made some noise to express irritation, I would change to pat rhythmically, just like when my daughter coaxed her to sleep when she was a child, but at that time, she In his arms, gently patted her back.
Mother really calmed down and stopped speaking.
I quietly looked up and found that she was asleep.
I never remember my mother having such an intimate caress for me.
embrace?
kiss?
Touch my head?
Hold my shoulder?
Pat me on the back?
When I was 1 year and 9 months old, my parents were transferred to Beijing Foreign Affairs University to study, and they were going to work abroad in the future.
I was sent to my grandmother's house.
When I was almost 5 years old, my parents took me back to Beijing and sent me to kindergarten.
They disappeared before I became "acquainted" with them-they were burdened with "heavy responsibilities" and went to work in countries that were far away and unfamiliar to them.
By the time my mother returned to China to give birth to my sister when I was 10 years old, she had become a stranger: she wore a sleeveless dress bought from abroad and had her curly hair perm, which was a thousand different from the "hard and simple" style advocated in China at the time. Here, I was even ashamed to walk with her.
The letter my mother wrote to me when I jumped in line basically asked me to "re-educate the poor and lower middle peasants", just like the People's Daily editorial, without personal feelings.
When I grow up, I naturally no longer long for the warm embrace and touch of my mother like a child, but deep in my heart, I guess this longing is like an everlasting flame.
Helping my mother take a bath, I started to touch her body.
I don't know whether this arrangement of destiny is to break the rigid boundary between mother and daughter through illness?
Lin Mengping, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told us: Counseling is touch life, "Psychological counseling is touching life."
I like the word "touch" very much, it can be translated as "touch", "touch", "contact", "touch" and "impress".
I took my mother for a pedicure once, and afterwards the master and I put on socks for my mother.
The master picked up mother's socks and said with emotion: "The old lady's socks are so white, blessed!"
I asked curiously: "Can you see anything in the socks?"
The pedicure master said: "Whether an old man is well taken care of can be seen in the socks. Some old people's socks are just like loach."
Parents are here, dare not grow old
My mother's inner world is becoming more and more like a "black hole". The life story of her life, the ups and downs she has experienced, and her current feelings have all been sucked into this black hole.
Every time I go home, the nanny will ask my mother: "Look, who is back? Do you recognize her?" When walking downstairs with my mother, the aunts would also ask my mother: "Do you know who I am?"
People always like to ask people with dementia "Do you know who I am", perhaps out of good intentions.
But I was wondering, would my mother want people to keep asking her like this and be corrected?
Maybe, I should be like Long Yingtai, every time I go to a nursing home to visit my mother, I say hello: "Mom, I am your daughter Long Yingtai, I am coming to see you"-instead of asking my mother "Who am I?" "I am your sister or your daughter."
"The longest farewell", I can't remember any book that describes the parting between dementia patients and their relatives.
If a loved one dies suddenly without warning, this kind of pain will really collapse.
But if you have enough time to prepare, but you have to watch your loved one's body still exist, but your heart and soul have drifted away, what kind of pain should it be?
I clearly felt that her heart and soul was drifting away.
When I go home, she still smiles, but instinct tells me that she is not smiling at "me", her eldest daughter, but at someone who is friendly to her.
When sitting side by side on the sofa with her, she actually could not "feel" my existence.
The mother who didn't take the initiative to get close to her child, now her emotions are like a desert river in autumn and winter.
Mother's heart and blood pressure are normal, and she may live a long time, but how can we keep her heart and soul?
How can her emotions not be lost like Malaysia Airlines' MH370?
In the past two years, in order to have more time to take care of my mother, I have put aside many things I want to do, can do, and happily do.
This semester, I even stopped the "Life and Death in Video" course offered at Beijing Normal University. Some students said on Weibo that "this news is cruel".
The hourglass of my life has turned upside down, and the end of life is looming on the horizon.
How divided I am now: mentally, I still maintain a kind of activity, still full of curiosity and curiosity, and still come up with some new ideas and creativity from time to time.
But my body runs in the opposite direction.
I can clearly feel that my steps are getting heavier day by day, my energy is declining day by day, and the time for effective work is getting less day by day.
This split makes me very painful.
I don't care if my hair is white, and the wrinkles on my face have increased a few more, but I really care about how to "live", and I am afraid that the remaining people will generate so-called "garbage time".
Therefore, when I have to subtract the weights that can exert my potential on the balance of life, and put them on the side of taking care of my mother, I will inevitably be psychologically unbalanced.
Those old men and women in the yard only saw my "filial piety" when taking care of my mother. In their eyes, I was still a child.
They didn't know that this child was also over 60 years old, not only to take care of his mother, but also to face his own struggles and illnesses, and to take care of other relatives.
Taiwanese director Yang Lizhou filmed "The Forgotten Time." This documentary about the elderly with dementia actually rushed to the top 10 Taiwanese movies that year.
He said that he did not intend to shoot this subject at the beginning, but that day, when he was about to leave the nursing home, he saw such a scene: an old man in his 60s and 70s came to send his 80 or 90 year old father to the hospital, and it was done. When the procedure was about to leave, the father suffering from dementia suddenly understood something and shouted at his son, "What the hell did I do wrong? You have to treat me like this!" The gray-haired son had to cry and bring the old father back. Home.
My husband brought back a book from Taiwan and gave it to me. The title of the book was "My Parents Are Old, We Are Old".
In the past, it was rare for a person to live for seventy years. When a person reaches retirement age, most of his parents are dead.
Now, after retiring from the workplace, there are many people who go to work directly at their parents' homes!
Elderly people in their 60s and 70s, taking care of people in their 80s or 90s, this will be the most typical scene in an aging society, especially in China, which has a cultural tradition of filial piety.
Is such a scene very warm, or is it also sad and helpless?
Some people may say: How happy your mother (dad) is still there!
But don't forget that, except for a few very healthy elderly, most of the elderly have "rejuvenated" and need a lot of care, let alone elderly people with dementia like my mother.
The old man next door, 102 years old, moved in with his daughter after his daughter retired.
The daughter pushes her father downstairs in a wheelchair three times a day, for more than ten years.
Fortunately, two generations of people live together. Unlike my husband and I, we have to separate often to take care of our elderly people after retirement.
Because I am taking care of my parents, the real feeling here cannot be for outsiders.
What is left for outsiders is filial piety and happiness, and what is left for myself is fatigue and hard work.
Parents are here and dare not grow old. This is what the elderly society requires of us.
Look down at the world
Before you know it, my mother is going to become my "little mother" again?
I need to take care of her like my own daughter, treat her as a baby?
I remembered going to the Peking University School of Medicine to listen to Professor Wang Yifang's class. He taught PhD students the "Philosophy of Life and Death" and said that picture books are also very helpful to "child-like people".
"Child-like crowd"?
Hehe, I heard this strange word for the first time.
Professor Wang said that they are adults, but they are children mentally, such as elderly people with dementia.
Mom is becoming a child.
Tomorrow, the 84-year-old mother will go to the "kindergarten". This "baby mom" whose intelligence has degraded to two or three years old will begin to live in a nursing home.
Mom fell asleep.
I checked her things one by one: changing clothes, toiletries, and commonly used medications. Finally, I took a picture of her from the cabinet and put it in my bag.
Looking at the boxes, luggage and washbasins on the ground, she sent me to kindergarten 57 years ago together with tears.
My mother's heart is already a deep ocean, and we can only glimpse a little bit of her inner world from the occasional waves.
That morning, everything was settled, and the nursing home was indeed kind of like a kindergarten: some old people sat on the sofa holding a doll, and some sat obediently on the table with the cutlery, waiting to eat.
The big TV in the hall is always on. For the elderly, it is a magic box of unknown purpose.
Two elderly people in wheelchairs seemed to be watching, but they were too quiet, so quiet that they did not respond to the show.
The Chinese team qualified, and they did not cheer; if someone died in the TV series, they would not be sad.
I took my mother to sit on the sofa, and I heard her say "go home" and "mother" in a small voice.
Fortunately, she is relatively comfortable in a nursing home.
Under the care of the nurse, my mother sent away one by one day and night.
She celebrated her 85th birthday.
I used to go to a nursing home to see my mother. Although she could not recognize me, I still rarely felt sad.
But after going to see my mother, I often feel sad and unbearable.
The most unacceptable thing is that my mother no longer looks up.
I checked the Internet and found that the "extremely severe cognitive decline" stage, which is also the last stage of dementia, would appear "walking requires assistance, even sitting unsteadily, unable to raise your head or smiling, muscle stiffness, and abnormalities). "Condition" and other symptoms.
My sister massaged her mother's cervical spine, and it seemed that she would get better after the massage.
But when I went again the next day, my mother's head was lowered deeper.
Any medical behavior will make her extremely frightened and irritable, and we no longer hope to make her "well" through treatment and correction.
She always grasped the corners of her clothes tightly-like a baby grasping her own comforter, that was her way to make herself feel safe.
In addition to being lonelier for mothers who no longer raise their heads, keeping the body moving has also become a problem.
Before entering the nursing home, she didn't know how to eat on her own. Now the difficulty of feeding has improved again: if she sits at the same height as her, it is difficult to put food into her mouth with a spoon.
For this reason, the nursing home bought a small bench so that the person who feeds the meal can sit lower and feed the meal on the spoon at a 45-degree angle.
In the process of feeding, the mother who kept bowing her head had to be lifted up and leaned against the back of the sofa again and again.
In order to find the right angle, the caregiver even squeezed onto the sofa where the mother was sitting, or put her mother's leg on her own, so that she could drink a few more porridge and eat a few spoonfuls of food.
Sleeping, eating, keeping the body clean, and walking are the most basic needs to maintain physical life. Now for mothers, everything is difficult.
It has been more than a year since my mother has been in the kindergarten, and I gave her a special anniversary gift-"Saliva towel".
I went to the baby supplies store to find this item, and the seller asked me: "How old is it? Is it your grandson?"
I was stunned, and it took a moment to tell the truth: "Yes, I bought it for an elderly person."
I once imagined that my mother would not be able to walk one day, but never thought that she would not be able to raise her head before she could not walk.
It seemed to happen suddenly, as if overnight, my mother decided not to look up at the world again.
Now, whether she walks, eats, or sits on the sofa to pass the time, she keeps her head down and her neck basically bent at 90 degrees.
The mouth that was originally facing the front has now become facing the ground, so gravity draws out the saliva.
What happened at the same time as her mother no longer raised her head was the loss of her orientation function.
Mom can't avoid obstacles when she walks.
If she didn't hold her, she would walk all the way to the corner, to the chairs of other old people who were sitting, and among the green plants and leaves...
Auschwitz’s survivor and Austrian philosopher Jean Emery once explored the "self" in sickness and aging. He said that when the self that he considered to be the "self" collapsed, "the body, or The physical sensation that appears has seized the highest power to shape oneself."
Due to long-term bowing, mother's right eyelid appeared edema, and it gradually got worse, and it seemed that it might rupture at any time.
We can't let her neck stand up again, we can only find a way to flatten her body, let her neck rest, and keep her face away.
In the past, my mother didn't go to bed at noon, but now she has to "put her down" at noon, and let her lie down anyway.
In terms of biological attributes, my mother is undoubtedly still alive now, but the language connection between life and life has been broken, and the body can still "communicate".
Give her a massage, put your arms around her, and hold her hand, which is the secret code we sent to my mother.
bid farewell
In Spain, I was awakened by the ringing of the telephone at two o'clock in the evening local time.
I heard the hurried voice in the microphone, and I knew that the thing I worried most might have happened.
After my mother passed away, I thought about it and thought it was amazing: it took 10 days from her first heart attack to her final death.
She seemed to be waiting for me to return home and recover from my first heart attack.
She gave me the last chance to meet.
I put my hand on my mother's forehead and stroked it lightly, she opened her eyes, looked at me blinking, and then made a gurgling sound in her mouth.
I stared at her blankly. It is already a luxury for us to communicate with my mother and listen to her last wishes and warnings.
I lifted the bed, found her hand that didn't have a needle, and put my hand in her palm.
She grabbed my hand.
I bent down, facing her ear, and gently said to her: "Mom, I am Xiaoya, and I am your eldest daughter. I came back from abroad. Can you recognize me? Your daughter is by your side. Do not be afraid……"
What's the situation in mom's brain?
Is there still emotional flow in her heart?
Is there anything she can't worry about?
Is she afraid of death?
Does she want us to do something for her... We all want to know, but we can't know!
If dementia makes us live in a parallel world, then the transparent wall it builds now makes me feel desperate!
I gently pulled out my hand, but it was obvious that my mother did not want to let go.
Although she didn't have much strength, I could still feel her holding me.
A few days later, our mother, an intellectual woman who came out of Jiangnan Water Village, finished her 89 years of life.
Sending off my mother and returning home, I decided to turn off my phone and sleep, so I don't have to worry about ringing in the middle of the night.
After turning off the lights, the summer night when Dad had left appeared.
It was the night of July 24, 1987. I slept with her in my mother's room. In the dark, my mother was crying.
Also, on the night of January 16, 1969, when I was 15 years old, I was about to leave Beijing to join the team in northern Shaanxi.
My mother put me to bed and made up a shirt for me under the lamp.
I heard her sobbing softly, who rarely expresses feelings.
It's been half a century.
I burst into tears.
Lu Xiaoya Source: China Youth Daily