Chinese grannies shine with their own style.

Han Bin wears her personally handmade one-piece dress and poses for photos. Photo: Lin Luwen/GT

 

Dressed up in a one-piece baby pink dress, accessorized with a delicate pearl necklace and a pink lady handbag, the salt-and-pepper-haired 71-year-old Han Bin glided down catwalks along the green ivy corridor, fascinating each passerby. 

As an iconic Chinese granny, she is telling people that aging and beauty is not a paradox. Beauty can grow with age. 

She wears makeup and high heels, loves drinking beer, masters social media platforms, and never lets her wrinkles wrinkle her soul. You can hardly match this charming granny with a stereotypical Chinese elderly woman appearing in some Western TV series.

 Recently, the upcoming sitcom Living with Lams produced by CBBC, BBC's children's channel, was accused of perpetuating racial stereotypes. The series focuses on a British Chinese family that runs a restaurant in Manchester. In the series, the grandmother is portrayed as an unmannered woman who spits everywhere. The series scripts were written without an Asian writer, and are scattered with racist terms such as "chonger".

After the controversy, the series has received criticism from Asians commenting that the sitcom is a litany of orientalist clichés. 

"Some Western TV series are always the stereotype makers," Han said.

 From Han's perspective, Western media has the responsibility to show the diversity of Chinese elderly females rather than bring shame to them. 

 "Hard-working, enthusiastic, and vibrant are the characteristics of most Chinese grannies."



Aging with elegance 



Han is headlining news with her unique style all the time. In 2016, she won the Miss Tourism International beauty contest and has been in the international spotlight ever since.

Recalling the experience of attending New York Fashion Week as the first Chinese senior model, she is still thrilled and excited.

 "I think it's my responsibility to let the world know the quality of life, attitude, and demeanor of the contemporary Chinese elderly," she told the Global Times.

However, her modelling career didn't start to glow until she retired. Before retirement, Han worked in an arts and crafts factory in Beijing. Inspired by an elderly modelling competition on TV, she started to learn how to model and has been devoting herself to modelling for the past 15 years. 

She experienced a cultural revolution in her twenties, and nowadays life gives Han more access to fashion and opportunities.

 "I used to be afraid of becoming an annoyed granny who just sits around and does nothing, but now I realize that the elderly can dream just as younger generations do," Han said.

 Wearing the handmade light pink dress she made by herself, Han appreciates that the improved living conditions nowadays have made her teenage dream come true.

"There was no pink when I was young, but now I have the chance to pick any color that I want," Han said. 

Han is not alone. More and more Chinese grannies are exploring new lifestyles in their advanced years, which gradually helps break down stereotypes. 

Another elderly modelling group known as "crazy granny" on social media who wear Qipao, a traditional Chinese women's dress and oversized earrings set the internet ablaze recently. A series of short videos featuring their catwalks have been gaining millions of likes on the short-video app TikTok. 

Elderly Chinese females have started to show younger generations their unique beauty and elegance in a younger way, which means social media does not belong to only young people anymore. 

"When younger people see me, they are not afraid of aging anymore," Han said.

Family matters 

Although there is a group of grandmas who have liberated a lifestyle that breaks down the stereotype of Chinese grannies, being family-oriented is still the unique and beautiful quality of most Chinese grannies and it lingers in the hearts of younger generations. 

Sun Ronghua, a 78-year-old retired woman from Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, who used to work for a textile mill has been retired for 28 years. 

Living with her husband who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, life is never easy for her. Taking care of her husband in the middle of the night has become a routine. 

Although she has three daughters and one son, in her seventies, she bought herself an apartment to enjoy a reassuring rest of life. 

"Taking caring of us is not compulsory for my children," Sun said.

 With only a primary school education, reading newspapers with presbyopic glasses is still her daily routine. 

"I have to know what is happening around me every day," Sun told the Global Times. 

After the CBBC race row, #RealAsianGranny went viral on Twitter to protest the racism over Chinese grandmas. Young Asians share their stories about their grandmas spontaneously to show a real Asian granny's life.  

The Global Times hit the streets to find out how younger generations perceive real Asian grannies, and most of them mentioned the words "sweet, caring, and tough."

  

"My grandma raised me even in her 70s and the food she cooks is my favorite," said 15-year-old Jiang Yuanhao, who studies at a high school in the US. 

Xia Qianhui, a 20-year-old sophomore from Shanghai studying at East China University of Science and Technology described her grandma as a sweet but strong woman.

As an educated urban youth who lived and worked in the mountains and the countryside for ten years, her grandma has brought her whole family back to the city. 

"Although my grandma is an ordinary nice granny to me, she is the strongest woman I know," Xia said.