17th May 2011 The old lady
In the extremely busy area of Yang Jia Ping, an old lady sat on the pedestrian path making old-fashioned shoes by hands. I was drawn to her by her silver hair, extremely-winkled face and slow-moving hands.
She’s eighty-three years old, yet she’s still sitting here in the traffic, working on something extremely delicate. They’re so beautiful, with the time and slow motions that went into them. I bought three pairs, purely out of admiration, for her. Despite her good eyes and hands, she struggled to work out the total price. We told her it’s RMB104, and asked if I could have RMB 4 discount (not for the bargaining, but to see how she would react). She said: “Are you not embarrassed to ask for discount, look how old I am!” Ha, she’s still very smart! So I gave her RMB 105.
Afterwards I tried to find her again, just to watch her working. But she’s nowhere to be seen again.
