In a common courtyard house in Dongsi Hutong, there lives a foreign old woman who can speak very fluent Beijing dialect. Her (Chinese) name is Yang Mila, a Dutch woman who came to China about half a century ago to marry her present husband Yang Baolu, a native in Beijing. Since the couple ever married in 1960, they have lived happily for about 50 years now.

Yang Mila was born in a noble family in the Netherlands. This year, she is 73 years old and her husband is 13 years older than her. When she first met Yang Baolu, she was still a young woman and her husband had just divorced and lived with his two sons. How did the two people meet then?

The story might trace back to 1953. In that year, Yang Mila came to China with her stepfather, who was an overseas Chinese. She stayed in China for three years and in these three years, she learned to speak Chinese fluently.

In 1956, when she was about to leave China, 22-year-old Yang Mila met her present husband Yang Baolu, who was 35 years old then and worked as an engineer in Beijing. The two met for the first time in a rainy night.

Actually, the two fell in love after the first meeting. However, at that time, Yang Mila had already bought a ticket home and had to leave China. Despite this, the two kept in touch with each other by letter. Three years later, in 1960, Yang Mila came back to China again. She decided to marry Yang Baolu despite her family's opposition.

In later years, Yang Mila gave birth to two sons and one daughter. With the two sons brought by her husband, Yang Mila had to look after five children. In addition to this, she also had to take care of her mother-in-law and did all the household chores. She became a full-time housewife. After her mother-in-law died, Yang Mila started to look for a job as a foreign teacher. During their fifty years of marriage, the man and wife have lived a happy life together.

Now all of their children have grown up and the old couple start to enjoy the happiness brought by family union. At present, they still live in their traditional Beijing courtyard house and they don't like to move to large buildings.

(China News Service November 27, 2007)