Disabled storyteller her own champion
Print Edition
As a popular storyteller on China’s online audio-sharing platform Ximalaya FM, headmaster of a training school and founder of an NGO offering mental health services, Cao Yan seems always full of beans and ready for new adventures.
“I would like to do things that others have never done before. Of course, such things must be useful to society,” Cao said.
However, her audience may never know that such a lovely voice belongs to a 60-year-old woman who has suffered from severe disabilities for decades.
Born in 1960 in an ordinary Beijing family, Cao had to walk with crutches as she suffered from infantile paralysis when she was six months old. Fortune has not been on her side: she lost her mother at the age of six.
During childhood, Cao was fascinated by the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen and made up her mind to become a writer like the Danish writer. Instead of playing outdoors like other children, she spent most of her time with a radio.
To be a good fairy-tale writer, Cao needed to understand children’s wild flights of fancy, so she started to visit the library every day and narrate stories to children at a primary school in Beijing as an after-school activity counsellor. She even learnt story-telling from Sun Jingxiu, a famous Chinese educator and storyteller for children.
In the beginning, some children would make fun of her disability. But her persistence finally won her a loyal audience.
Misfortune struck again when she was 26. A severe traffic accident condemned Cao to five orthopedic surgeries in the next six years and left her wheelchair-bound for life.
Despite all odds, Cao never failed to see the silver lining. She knows what she wants and what kind of person she would like to be.
Cao always makes plans for her life. After the car accident, she was desperate to become a teacher and open a school.
After initially raising 50,000 yuan (US$7,600), she opened the Beijing I-Shine Education for Young Learners in 1994 to provide extracurricular art, science and language classes for children.
The school now has more than 140 students and was rated a top-level private school in the downtown Xicheng District.
“I always tell people you must be your own champion,” the self-made woman said. “I cannot rescue people like the firefighters but I can help them in my own way.”
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