January 23, 2024
BEIJING – Every Thursday morning, the 89-year-old granny Wu Pinxian, kindly dubbed “Auntie Wu”, plays beautiful piano music to de-stress people visiting the outpatient department of the Guangzhou Panyu Central Hospital in Panyu district, Guangzhou, Guangdong province, CCTV News reported.
Wu Pinxian, a Panyu local, has been a volunteer piano performer since the end of 2023. She learned to play the piano when she was a school student. After graduation, Wu maintained her interest in music. In 2023, after retirement, when she heard that the hospital was looking for volunteers to play the piano, she was intrigued, and got selected.
The staff members said the hospital would hold a piano performance every Thursday and a giant concert every season to create a relaxing atmosphere and ease patients’ worries.
Wu’s music is effective: many patients and their relatives sing along with her piano, give thumbs-up spontaneously, and some of them have even become her loyal audiences. Slowly children became attracted. So, Wu found a music textbook of elementary school and learned to play the children’s songs to interact with them. She even teaches children to play the piano.
Until now, Wu has been performing there every Thursday for one and a half hours with just a short break for almost four months.
During the rest, Wu previews the following songs. She uses a thick book of handwritten music score in her bag because she’s unable to see normal music scores and the keyboard clearly due to her impaired right eye, Wu said. Therefore, she has to copy the score with bigger notes, and learns scores by heart to perform fluently.
When the temperature recently went down, the hospital worried about Wu’s health, paused the piano performance. Yet, she went back immediately as the weather turned warm.
Though Wu comforts others via her music, she herself is suffering from the pain of losing her husband, who passed away in Dec. Yet, she says the life has to continue. Working as a volunteer in the hospital not only brings back the memories of youth, but also brings warmth to others and reinforced the value of life. This is like achieving many goals at one stroke.
Wu lives in an apartment for the aged. According to the staff members there, she spends three to four hours practicing the piano every day. “After picking up the piano as a hobby, she wants to fulfill her dream even if she is already 89. That is a very positive influence on the other seniors in the whole apartment complex,” the staff members said.
“I think playing the piano allows the patients to listen to music, which provides them both physical and mental pleasure. Although I had not played the piano for a long time, it is good to play for others. I think we should do good deeds, and I will do my best,” Wu wrote down in her diary.