Love overcomes ethnic hurdles

Song Huashou and his wife were outwardly calm as they told their love story, but it was easy to spot their inner excitement.

With a restrained smile, Song did not explain his feelings extravagantly. Instead, he recounted their experience in simple language.

His parents came from Qingdao, Shandong province, but his soldier father brought the family to the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region just after Song was born in the early 1950s.