The other evening we were able to spend time with one of our closest friends.

(DongMei with her nephew)

A few minutes into being at their home we noticed that her grandmother was sitting in a chair fast asleep.

We had never met her grandmother before and could not believe she was there.

She is in her 90′s and has been a widow since her early 20′s.  She grew up being Tibetan married a Naxi (One of China’s minority groups)  man and then learned the new language and culture and took on the traditional dress style, which she still wears to this day.  After her husband died in the war, no one would marry her because she had two young girls, and hence couldn’t produce boys, therefore she was not wanted.  She told us that her mother in law taught her to smoke (which she still does to this day) to handle the stress of losing her husband while so young and raising two girls on her own in a culture that was not truly her own.  She speaks a little Mandarin, but still uses the Naxi language and local dialect in her every day life.  Since most of her teeth are gone it is hard for even her family to understand her, but she seemed to dialogue a lot with them all when we were there.

She loved playing with and feeding Aila, along with showing us the different parts of her traditional clothing.

(Aila with LaoTai (left), and DongMei’s father (Tibetan) and her nephew (Tibetan/Naxi)

When I got to take a picture with her she moved in close to see me (she is blind in one eye) and I said to her in Mandarin – You are so beautiful! That she understood and she started to laugh, as did the entire family and then proceeding to tell me that no one in her whole life has ever called her beautiful… she was a young widow with two small girls… no one would ever have told her she was beautiful… but she was so beautiful!

What an evening we will cherish for a long, long time.

(Donmei’s Niece, LaoTai and us)

(DongMei, her mama (one of LaoTai’s daughters, the other passed away recently from cancer) and LaoTai)

(Four generations of lovely Tibetan/Naxi women!)

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