Neither age nor cancer slows model in Ningxia

Li Chunhong, 66, said it was cancer that fired her enthusiasm for life, pushing her to do things she had never dreamed of — being a model, for instance.

Li was a civil servant before retiring in 2017. She was diagnosed with breast cancer and went through 25 radiation treatments, suffering pain and depression.

"Knowing that life is limited, I wanted to do something I really liked," she said.

At the suggestion of a friend, she became a model in 2018. After only a few months of training, she took part in a national catwalk competition for elderly models.

To her surprise, she won the gold award and then repeated the victory twice in consecutive annual competitions.

Li felt she had been reborn into a wonderful new world. Her identity changed from civil servant dressed only in dark-colored clothes to a model presenting the latest fashions.

"True beauty comes from a state of mind. I still have a young heart and want to make every day meaningful and share my happiness with the people around me," Li said.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, various modeling competitions have been postponed or canceled. So Li turned her attention to short videos. Now she has more than 200,000 followers on a short video platform.

"After retirement, you are actually entering a new battlefield of life," she said. "You have to learn constantly."

（China Daily）