Liu Shikun at 87: A Piano, Two Toddlers and a Nine-Year Marriage

A short video from a birthday party has put one of China’s most famous pianists back in the spotlight — not for his playing, but for his family. Liu Shikun, 87, sits at a grand piano with his two-year-old son on his left arm and his five-year-old daughter leaning at his right, picking out Happy Birthday while his wife, Sun Ying, films on a phone. The candlelit scene is warm and ordinary, which is precisely what makes it news: nine years ago, when the couple registered their marriage, the reaction online was anything but warm.

Liu is a household name in China, a child prodigy who became one of the country’s most celebrated classical pianists and later a prominent piano educator. Sun Ying, 37 years his junior, was his student before she became his wife. When their relationship became public, the age gap did the talking. Commenters called him a dirty old man and her a gold digger, and plenty predicted the marriage would not last three years.

Instead, the couple have built a life that looks, from the outside, remarkably steady. Sun Ying gave birth to their daughter when Liu was 81 and to their son when he was 84, making him one of the oldest new fathers in the public eye. The birthday clip is the latest in a slow drip of family moments that have gradually shifted the tone of the conversation from mockery to curiosity, and for some, grudging admiration.

The story resonates because it touches a question Chinese families argue about constantly: how much does age difference matter, and who gets to decide? The initial hostility was not only about the couple. It was about a familiar script in which an older, wealthy man and a younger woman are assumed to be trading money for youth. Nine years and two children later, that script fits less comfortably.

There is also a professional dimension. Liu has spent decades teaching and promoting classical piano in China, and he remains active. For his fans, the video is a reminder that the man who once filled concert halls is now performing for the smallest possible audience, and seems content with it. The image of a father in his late eighties chasing a toddler around a piano bench is unusual anywhere; in China, where grandparents are more often the ones minding small children, it is striking.

None of this settles the debate, and the couple have not tried to. They rarely give interviews about their private life, and the video itself carries no statement beyond the obvious affection in the room. That reticence may be part of why the story keeps returning: there is little to argue with, only a scene that viewers interpret through their own assumptions about marriage, money and age.

What has changed is the volume. The harshest predictions have not been vindicated, and the internet has moved on to fresher scandals. For now, the most notable thing about the family in the video is how unremarkable they look — a father, a mother, two small children, and a birthday song played a little slowly, the way an 87-year-old might play it.