Love between a Dutch aristocrat and a Beijinger spans over 50 years
- Source: Global Times
- [16:18 September 25 2009]
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Couple photo of Mila and Yang Baolu (China Pictorial)
On January 1, 1960, Yang and Mila got married. As a Chinese daughter-in-law, Mila added the surname Yang to her name — Yang Mila. At the beginning of their marriage, they worked hard to integrate into each other in terms of living habits and cultural customs. Mila loves to eat Chinese dishes, whereas Yang likes western food, oil paintings and classical music.
As their neighbors moved into then modern apartment blocks, the Yangs chose to stay in their siheyuan or courtyard home of 40 square meters where they have lived for half a century.
In those days, Mila was like other Chinese women, doing daily chores such as grocery shopping, cooking, looking after her mother-in-law, her step-sons as well as her two sons and daughter.
She learned to cook Chinese dishes from her mother-in-law and took care of the whole family. Mila’s mother, living in Netherlands, worried about her daughter and often sent food packages to her. But she gave them to her mother-in-law and children to eat instead.
As the Yang family had so many mouths to feed and little money to sustain it in the 1960s, Yang proposed they carry out a “planning economy” at home. The family had to record all their expenses in an account book everyday. At the beginning, Mila, who was not used to not having money, found this hard to accept. She recalled, “Even one yuan had to be recorded into the account book. If the budget did not meet the goal we had planned, he would be angry. ”
However, Mila later realized how important the account book was, and even today Yang still keeps this habit of writing expenses in the account book.
In 1981, when the children had grown up, the family’s economic burdens were relieved. Mila, being proficient at several foreign languages, decided to become a foreign teacher at Tsinghua University, Beijing University of Technology and Beijing International Studies University. “Without Yang’s support, I was not brave enough to be a teacher,” she said.
