Letters

Charming dance of elderly

Watching elderly people perform square dancing is an absolutely wonderful experience. In Beijing, you can see senior citizens, many of them couples, practicing all sorts of dance forms in public places. In a city where relationships last 10 minutes and few people care about anything but themselves and their cell phones, these loving couples who have been together for 30 or even 50 years are a lesson in contrast.

While cutting through Tuanjiehu Park one evening last summer, I saw hundreds of couples scattered across the park, in large groups, small groups and every pairing possible. They were performing Chinese dance, Latin American dance, 1950s-style sock hop, Country Line Dance and even the fox trot ... literally everything. In another part of the park, people were analyzing the music on the "song sheets" distributed by someone while others were just "singing".