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| (File Photo) |
BEIJING, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Sketches by a 91-year-old illustrating his six-decade-long marriage have circulated on the Internet, leaving Chinese netizens in tears.
Rao Pingru, a native of eastern Jiangxi Province now living in Shanghai, has spent the past four years drawing 200 pictures in 18 albums, about his wife Mao Meitang, who died in 2008 in her early 80s. They were married for 60 years.
The albums, titled "Our Stories," are due to be released next month, but by Sunday morning excerpts had been reposted around 260,000 times on China's Twitter-like microblogging services.
Rao, who fought in the Anti-Japanese War, recalls via a colored drawing his first meeting with Meitang in 1946.
"I walked into her house, and saw a twenty-something girl, pretty-looking, sitting in front of a mirror putting on lipstick. Such was my first impression of Meitang," Rao, a former magazine editor, wrote in the caption.
(File Photo)
"How beautiful the first encounter was!" wrote netizen "Zhimatangsu" in a post on Sina Weibo, the country's most popular microblog service.
With his pencil and crayons, Rao has recorded details of what he remembers about Meitang.
He has sketched their dates, wedding ceremony, first meal made by Meitang, first fight, his wife's toiling to support their five children and her suffering from nephropathy, disease of the kidney.
"I've drawn my love, with every stroke telling the best in you," "Yuchacha" imitating Rao on Sina Weibo.
"I was reduced to tears while skimming through the drawings," net user "Chenfang" wrote on Tencent Weibo, another popular microblogging service in the country.
"Yezi" said on Tencent Weibo, "While reading about their lifetime love, I could not stop crying."
One illustration shows the pair on a date in a park, during which Rao was too shy to say "I love you," but instead sang a then-popular English song "Oh Rosemary I Love You."
He has also sketched Meitang's last tear on her deathbed. It was on March 19, 2008, when the family paid their last visit to the hospital.
"Around 10 a.m., I saw her right eye moisten, with a tear from the corner of her eye. In the afternoon, Meitang left me for good," Rao wrote in the caption. She died of kidney disease.
Love that never gets bored is the most beautiful in the world, said "Xiaomigezi" on Tencent Weibo.
"We shared life and death, weal and woe. I am now drowned in memories of you, which are deeper than the sea," Rao has written in the title pages of the albums.
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