Resonance

Like most grandmothers, she was an expert at knitting. Cotton sweaters, delicate hats, and Cinderella dolls grew out of her hands, landing on her granddaughter’s bed.

Ayi told me that ever since retiring, she spent most of her time with her granddaughter, teaching her how to read children’s novels, strolling across dazzling streets, singing lullabies, and wrapping her tiny hands in hers as they rambled along the lush greenery in the city. The memories she described were so much like my own with my grandmother that I wondered if all grandmothers were cut from the same idealized mold, each one bursting into the world with an inherent talent and benevolence.

A Picture of Ayi

She shared that, of all the things that filled her days, the one that came apart from her family was life at Pao, which, in some ways, felt like an extension of her familial memories.

“Whenever I see you kids around school, I have this feeling that you’re all my grandsons and granddaughters”, she said. “It’s hard to describe. I guess it's what you’re inclined to feel as you get old, an instinct to care for all the young, vibrant lives around you.”

She cherished the kids she encountered like her own, and I felt this familiarity within her that resembles my family. Perhaps this is just the most genuine human resonance that flickered into existence as we grin at each other at the turning corner of the library. Ayi called Pao a transient home - a place she had not known for long but one that had quietly embraced her. 

“Before I retired and came to Pao, I worked in the textile industry. I spent 30 years of my youth in the factories, pulling textiles out of vats, weaving them into fabric, shaping them into clothing.”

I could sense her passion as words flowed out gently. Not only her passion for her past profession but also her passion for life - the passion within her was shimmering. 

“My family and I travel around during holidays. I liked Ningbo. There’s delicious seafood and tranquil natural scenes. The rivers and mountains intermingled; it’s breathtaking.” Then, with infectious excitement, she added, “Oh, and there’s Beijing. Have you ever seen the flag-raising ceremony in the twilight of Beijing? The marches and music are a grand sight that one must not miss.”

She seemed feverish in sharing her past journeys, splendid stories that mapped into the road of her life. When I asked if there was somewhere she longed to visit but hadn’t yet, she nodded. “I want to see all the places with history embedded within, the ones that have stood through splendor and ruin, through dynasties rising and falling.”

Life’s tide flowed along that fluctuation of history, going through crests, reaching their peak, then gradually sloping downward. Most people her age, I thought, situated themselves in this downward-sloping position, shrinking into a routine to accept their narrowing worlds. Yet Ayi carried a restless enthusiasm for the world; she knew how to create meaning.

Before we parted, Ayi told me her favorite leisure was reading, and of all the books she had ever encountered, her favorite remained Genghis Khan, the biography of the Mongolian emperor who united the Mongol tribes and spent his life on the grasslands, boundless and unrestrained.

I imagined him on horseback, galloping through an endless stretch of prairie, the wind pulling at his robes, his spirit unbroken. And somehow, that prairie scene felt like the perfect metaphor for Ayi - a lively and passionate soul that remained tender yet resonated with the swifting north wind.