Mrs. Lee
I made a rather rash decision to head north from Shanghai to Beijing because my father was leaving China from Beijing and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to see him next even though I knew I had to be in Hong Kong in 2 weeks for a flight to Singapore. We stayed with my father’s old friend from when they were in middle school. 
Here is where I met a rather amazing Chinese woman. Please don’t let this photo fool you. 
She may seem like any other grandma from this picture, but if you were lucky enough to get a chance to meet her like I did, you’d most likely be as impressed as I was. On my last day in Beijing, she took me for a long walk (the Chinese are quite well known for this sort of thing) around the Old Summer Palace and the surrounding grounds. 
We started after a nice lunch of Peking Duck 
and sending my father off to the airport around 2pm. It was the best weather since I had arrived in Beijing. The sun was out and it was about 23 C. We wandered all around the ruins 
and rented a boat to cross the lake in the middle of the Palace. 
After about 3.5 hours of walking, we finally got to the other side of the Palace grounds. I was already pretty tired and my feet hurt a bit as I had on my Chinese brail shoes. In many places in China, they have specially paved sections of the sidewalk to guide blind people from street to street with raised bumps just before the crosswalk. Apparently my shoes were “designed” to feel every little bump, stone, crack on the ground. But I digress, this isn’t a story about my brail shoes, this is a story about 1 amazing and unassuming woman. She then took me to her old university stomping grounds at Qinghua University. It must have been more than 40 years since she studied there, but you could tell she was still very familiar with the campus founded in 1919. We walked along the Quad that you’d see in just about any campus in the world, to her old buildings and along the dried up canals that I’m sure were quite beautiful when she was there in another life. In that other life, she used to be a military tank designer. 
Ya, I would have never figured that either, maybe a housewife, secretary, clerk, banker… anything but a military weapons architect. But that’s not the only surprising thing about her. After 4 hours of walking around, we walked into an area with a small lake with a single track dirt path up and down around the lake. She bounded up and down the path with such speed and agility that I had difficulty keeping up with her almost 30 years her junior. Throughout the day, I kept asking her if she was tired, but she assured me that she was fine and it was certainly evident that she was. She’s also a veritable encyclopedia of bus routes to get from point A to B. You can travel 20-30Km for less than .25 cents. A couple days earlier, she put me on a bus that dropped me off directly in front of my destination, Lama Temple. As we headed home, we climbed on bus so packed full of people that I didn’t really believe we were going to be able to make it on. She just squeezed her way through and pulled me along as the doors slammed shut just missing my ass. 
45 minutes later, we were within a couple blocks of her home. Without missing a beat as we walked in the door, she started cooking dinner and as I was leaving the next day, she helped me do my laundry before preparing for bed at almost 12am no worse for the wear. I only hope that in 30 years that I will be able to do ½ the things she can do even if it’s at half the speed. Thank you for your hospitality Mr. and Mrs. Lee. Mr. Lee can you please share this story with your wife.
Tags: Travel
Kane
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