It was her 98th birthday yesterday. In the house I was taken to when I was born (and grew up in) I bought her some flowers that was lost on its way to the house– on the back of a motorbike that transported everything to Beijing city-dwellers these-days. The courier had taken it to the the opposite house of the Inner Mongolia Building (内蒙古大厦), which was the humungous building that was constructed about ten or fifteen years ago which blocked off our hutong. Before that there was only one way to get in, and it was straight through the hutong, except all that had changed now.
When the flowers arrived, it was time to go– to a friend’s in the countryside. But the look on her face was worth the trip, and getting the flowers. She was born on December 22 in 1920 or 1921 on the Lunar calendar, but she now celebrates it both in the Lunar and the Gregorian calendar.