The way some Chinese parents shower love on their grown-up children can be smothering, but from an outsider's perspective it may look like a black comedy eliciting laughs and tears in equal measure. When you spot a Mickey Mouse actor at a public recreation area, who do you think is inside the costume? A child, perhaps? No, it's an adult because the figure is much taller and moves about with energy. Never in my wildest imagination would I say an elderly woman.

But Yang Zhiqiao is 75 and retired. She dons the Mickey Mouse costume in Luoyang, Henan province, to earn some pocket money from passersby, which she saves for her son. "My son is 40 and is still single. I don't want to be a burden to him. I want to help him financially so he can get a wife," the Henan native says.