Idid not start my education until I was 17. There are simply too few chances for blind kids to get an education in China, let alone a poor country boy like me. Only about 5 percent of blind Chinese have any schooling. Still, my childhood was a happy one. I did almost all the things a country boy does, climbing trees or catching fish in the river. I even helped out in the fields, doing things like picking leaves. How? We blind people develop a good sense of touch. Ripe tobacco leaves do not have fine hairs on them.
Since I was little, I have understood that we blind people will always be treated differently, and sometimes unfairly. To give you a simple example, naughty children used to hit me sometimes for no reason and run away, and then everyone would have a good laugh.
When my brother heard about the blind school in Linyi, our nearest city, my family sent me there. There were 11 students in my class, aged from 10 to 25. I learned for the first time how differently blind kids are treated from one family to another. While some were free to leave their houses on their own, others were locked up at home when their families were not around.