He could not speak. My dad said he was infected with some disease when he was young. Later he\u00a0remained\u00a0as dumb\u00a0because his family had no money to send him to\u00a0a doctor. If he wanted to say something, a strange and creepy sound would come out, like he was crying. He did not know sign language, therefore it was hard for him to communicate with others. He had a kind heart though.\u00a0\u00a0People called him ‘Muted Grandpa’ .<\/p>\n
The old man picked up cardboards for a living, so he did not\u00a0look\u00a0clean at all. His both hands were always covered with dirt and\u00a0his face and clothes were\u00a0filthy. Every time when he exchanged\u00a0cardboards for money, it was his happiest moment. He smiled\u00a0at every pedestrain passing by, waving his hand hard. It was difficult to understand why he was so excited\u00a0about it. He then sat on the stairs,\u00a0enjoying several cigarettes. Sometimes tears might burst from his eyes, maybe\u00a0because of\u00a0his precious memories.<\/p>\n
The old man’s life was simple. Every day he\u00a0staggered to the garbage heap, holding a bag and searching for hours. Still, he smiled a lot when getting money and sitting on stairs to smoke. Sometimes he coughed so loudly\u00a0as if he was about to die.<\/p>\n
Once, I visited him with dad. That day was a sunny day, but after entering his home, I was chilled.\u00a0In the tiny, shabby sub-divided flat, I saw the old man’s loneliness. I saw the wrinkles on his face. It looked like all the pain was written on his face.<\/p>\n
Later Muted Grandpa mostly stayed at home due to his health problem. He was lonely, but still kept a faint\u00a0smile on his face. His neighbours treated him well. He felt grateful but could not\u00a0utter a word.<\/p>\n
He was an old man who picked up cardboards\u00a0 for a living,\u00a0refusing to live on\u00a0the dole. Perhaps\u00a0hardship did not mean so much to him anymore and that was the reason why he wished to\u00a0look\u00a0strong in people’s mind. He was ordinary but great.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He could not speak. My dad said he was infected with some disease when he was young. Later he\u00a0remained\u00a0as dumb\u00a0because his family had no money to send him to\u00a0a doctor. If he wanted to say something, a strange and creepy sound would come out, like he was crying. He did not know sign language, therefo.........Read More<\/a>","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":8474,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","language-en","classlevel-s4","schoolyear-77"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5878"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5945,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5878\/revisions\/5945"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}