Visually impaired student sets sights on career in medicine

HANGZHOU, May 16 (Xinhua) -- Instead of pursuing a career as a masseuse as many blind people do in China, Ye Jingfen, who is congenitally visually impaired, wants to be a doctor.

Ye, a college student from a mountainous village in the city of Lishui, east China's Zhejiang Province, secured good grades in the postgraduate entrance examination this year. In September, she will start pursuing her master's degree in traditional Chinese medicine at a university in Beijing.

It took years for her to "find a way out of the darkness," Ye, 24, told Xinhua ahead of the 31st National Day for Helping the Disabled which falls on Sunday.

In her own words, she always expected to "spread light into the lives of others."

"I was unable to see things clearly and often stumbled since as long as I can remember," said Ye. At first, she did not realize the inconvenience as she thought everyone was the same.

The teacher in Ye's kindergarten often organized ball games. However, she was never able to catch the ball. "Each time I could feel it approaching, one of the other kids would have already picked it up." After learning of Ye's confusion and embarrassment, her mother took her to a hospital in Lishui.

Ye was then diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, an incurable hereditary degenerative eye disease leading to complete vision loss, but at the time she was blissfully unaware. While sitting in front of Wu Baile, her attending doctor, she couldn't help smiling, which piqued Wu's curiosity.

"I'm imagining becoming a doctor after my eyesight gets better. In that way, I can cure more kids and play ball games with them," the little Ye told Wu. Touched by her words, Wu helped her find a special education school in Hangzhou, the capital city of Zhejiang Province.

"Since that day, a new chapter started in my life," said Ye. She mastered braille in two months and became fascinated by reading with her fingers. She also learned how to take care of herself during her 12 years at the special education school, which instilled in her expectations of a bigger world.

"The world in front of me had gradually disappeared over the 12 years there. However, I could feel that the road to the future had become more and more clear," she said.

In 2016, Ye finished the braille version of the national college exam paper and was admitted to Changchun University in Jilin Province, more than 2,000 km away from home.

"The special education school had provided me with a relatively enclosed environment where I was well protected. I was thankful for it, but I enjoy the university filled with various people and unexpected challenges better," said Ye.

She experienced many "firsts" during her university days: taking a subway and even a train alone, hanging out in shopping malls, and joining an oral English club, which made her world "colorful," she said.

Ye majored in acupuncture and massage in college and helped relieve several people of muscular soreness during her internships. Nevertheless, she never forgot her original aspiration of becoming a doctor, so she kept studying for the postgraduate entrance examination.

"Although I was used to studying for a long time, the lack of learning materials for general courses in braille had become a big headache for me," said Ye.

The municipal library of Longquan, a city under the jurisdiction of her hometown Lishui, solved her problem. With the help of supportive staff members, the content in her textbooks could be read aloud or printed in braille by machines.

"She was so hardworking that we met her every day in the last three months before she took the exam. She usually spent the whole afternoon here," said librarian Lu Junwei.

"Though it can be hard for me, I want equality for everyone," said Ye, who cherishes each opportunity to be together or even compete with her peers. "I'm always ready to be a part of society."

Ye has never stopped dreaming in spite of the obstacles in her path, and after obtaining her master's degree, she plans on becoming a traditional Chinese medical doctor trusted by her patients, giving them professional diagnoses and treatment.

"Also, I want to help more people suffering from visual impairment light up their life, just as I've been helped," she said.