After a few years apart, his hair had already turned snow-white.
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history
Echoes Han Yu's 《祭十二郎文》: 吾年未四十，而视茫茫，而发苍苍 — 'I am not yet forty, yet my eyesight blurs, my hair turns gray.' One of the most moving passages in classical Chinese prose, giving the idiom its undertone of premature aging from grief or toil.
mistakes
发 here is pronounced fà (hair), not fā (to send). Same distinction as 头发 (tóufà). Pinyin sources sometimes write fā — that's wrong for this context.
