They were about 16 years old when their streets crossed. They had 94 when they decided that, after almost seventy years without seeing each other, they could start a new life together.
Xu Guizhen and Cao Zhenwei were both born in 1926.
Their fathers were friends and they managed a photo studio together in Weihai, in the Chinese province of Shandong. In 1937, during the war against Japan, their families moved to Shanghai.
Xu and Cao met a few years later, when they were about 16.
Xu's father loved Cao and wanted him to marry his daughter, but there was a decisive obstacle: Cao was already promised to another woman.
So life took another direction.
They both married with other people, built their own families, had children and spent decades of changes practically without seeing each other.
Years passed.
Then decades.
Both remained widows.
Their story seemed to belong permanently to a distant past, until a random encounter changed everything.
In 2019, Xu's younger brother participated in a retirement meeting in Shanghai.
He met Cao there.
Cao asked him if his sister was still alive and how she was. Shortly afterwards he managed to get in touch with her.
When they finally heard on the phone, Xu immediately knew who he was talking to.
It's been decades since the last time they saw each other.
Soon after they met in person.
From that moment on they continued to feel regularly and, shortly after, decided to spend together the years ahead.
They did not decide to consider that meeting only a memory of youth.
On 23 September 2020, both ninety-four years, Xu and Cao married.
They later lived together in a structure for the elderly of Shanghai, sharing a room of about 30 square meters.
That's where they spent their days.
They were photographed while strolling by hand.
Their story doesn't erase lives before that wedding.
Both had families, children, loved people and much of their existence spent far away from each other.
And that's what makes it special.
It's not the story of two people who were still waiting for seventy years.
It is the story of two lives that followed completely different paths and that, when there seemed to be little space to start again, they met a second time.
At the age of 16, circumstances took them on different paths.
At 94 they decided to go along the road that remained.