To have and to hold: centenarian couple still in love after 96 years
Wife first joined husband’s family at age of six after being orphaned
A couple in Guilin, Guangxi, who have been married for 96 years are still very much in love, according to a report on qq.com.
The husband, a farmer in Taiping village, turned 102 this year and his wife is 103. The woman said she could still remember the day when she arrived in her husband’s home, at the age of six.
To survive after the early death of her parents, the woman followed a local arrangement called tong yang xi, meaning “daughter-in-law raised as a child”, which allowed her to be adopted by another family and marry one of that family’s sons.
“In the evening, we had dinner with the elders of the family, and we were married,” she was quoted in the report as saying.
Her husband’s family was also poor, unable to afford even a mattress, and the couple had to sleep on a bare bed curled together like animals when the temperature dropped, she said.
But her husband and his family treated her kindly, always giving her food even though they often did not have enough to eat themselves, and she also worked hard to help support the family with her meagre wages.
When they became older, the husband tended the fields and the wife took care of the family at home, sometimes making shoes to earn extra income, and they had lived that way ever since.
They eat little meat and, whenever the weather allows, stroll through the village hand-in-hand.
Other villagers said they never saw the centenarian couple fight or argue with each other, and the world feels peaceful and calm in their presence.
The couple have five sons and a daughter, who return to the village regularly to visit their parents.
