LIFE
20 | Tuesday, July 30, 2019 CHINA DAILYO
n China’s short-video app
TikTok, known locally as
Douyin, a top popular
category is young people
dancing to trendy tunes, where fil-
ters create an appreciative atmos-
phere where heart signs float.
Dong Xuxi, 22, is among them.
Like other protagonists of such vid-
eos, she is radiant with confidence,
the only difference being that one of
her legs is artificial. Dancing is not
the only activity she engages in. In
her videos, she sprints, works out in
the gym, climbs mountains, practic-
es boxing and goes skiing, gaining
437,000 followers and more than 12
million “likes” on the app.
In 2013, she was severely injured
in a car accident and had her right
leg amputated. Then, after three
months of operations and treatment
in hospital, she began the long and
agonizing journey of adapting to the
artificial limb and getting back to a
normal life.
“I didn’t know how to walk prop-
erly for the first few years. At first, I
still needed crutches even when
wearing prosthesis, which scraped
off my skin. It hurt a lot and I could
only hobble along,” Dong says.
The accident also crushed her
self-confidence — she shut herself
off from the world, fearing people
would notice her deficiency.
“Strangers would be staring at
me, and when they did, I would stop
walking altogether and wait for
them to leave. I didn’t want to walk
at all, let alone go outdoors and par-
ticipate in sports.”
Around 2016, Dong watched an
online video, in which a girl wear-
ing a prosthetic leg walks with
seemingly perfect ease. Yearning
to walk properly, she contacted the
girl and learned about a prosthetic
company and rehabilitation center
in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.
“It already hurt so much that I
thought I might as well give it a try,”
Dong says, adding that she left her
home in Shenzhen to move toHangzhou for rehabilitation in 2017,
where she later transferred her job
and now trains.
Encouraged by her physical ther-
apist, she began to participate in
outdoor activities. One of the first
activities was a group walk last year,
in which a dozen of her amputee col-leagues went for a walk together. It
was the first time after the accident
that she wore shorts and revealed
her prosthetic leg in public.
“I had no qualms walking behind
my colleagues and taking photos
with them. Even though people
stared, they also expressed theiramazement at our courage,” Dong
says.
She also learned to run again,
which was initially daunting as it
was the first time in five years. Over
time, she felt more capable and will-
ing to push her limits. Now, she has
completed three events with the
longest record being 7 kilometers,
and she has also climbed the
Huashan Mountain in Shaanxi
province and flown through clouds
on a paraglider.
For fun, she opened a Douyin
account last year. At first, she posted
only videos that did not expose her
new leg. Then one day, she took
some full-body shots, which received
a lot of comments that expressed
support and admiration for her.
“Your willpower is beyond imagi-
nation. Keep going. You are beauti-
ful,” Douyin user Afanda
commented on her photo.
Many other TikTok users have
commented how Dong’s optimism
has given them the courage to over-
come adversity and try harder in
life, including some amputees who
messaged her for advice.
Dong says posting videos also
allowed her to record her own
progress: “I could not walk very
smoothly back then, and now I can
walk with confidence. Sometimes I
feel that the prosthesis has become a
part of me and I even forget that I
am actually wearing one.”
She now works as a physical ther-
apist herself, and she encourages
her patients to participate in sport
activities, which can help them
recover both physically and psycho-
logically.
“I hope that by watching my vid-
eos, more people like me will refrain
from thinking that they are incapa-
ble and know that they can actually
walk and run normally, do quite a
lot of sports and open up more,”
Dong adds.Contact the writer at
[email protected]Taking it in her stride
An amputee’s zest for life has made her a TikTok star, Cheng Yuezhu reports.
Fruit-pit carver helps
people with disabilities
SHENYANG — Pushing her way
off a crowded bus, Yan Ming, 60,
strolls down the road toward a
small workshop with the help of a
crutch and warmly greets her
workmates as she enters.
She takes a seat, puts on her
reading glasses and plays with her
“dental drill” (an electric carving
tool) and gravers in the light of a
desk lamp, carving an ear of corn
out of a single olive stone.
Yan has spent the past three years
as an apprentice learning the intri-
cate Chinese folk art of fruit-pit carv-
ing, superb craftsmanship that turns
fruit pits into exquisite handicrafts.
The centuries-old traditional
craft first came into vogue during
the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing
(1644-1911) dynasties, in which fruit
pits of olives, peaches, walnuts
were used to create life-like minute
sculptures of figures, landscapes,
architecture, flowers or birds.
Yan puts her right little finger
against her left thumb to stop it
trembling, a hangover from
almost six years spent recuperat-
ing in a wheelchair after a craniot-
omy she received following a
severe car accident in 1999.
“When I was a green hand, it
was hard for me to stop bleeding
as the drill usually went into my
badly shaking fingers,” she says.
Ci Xiang would always come over
and pat his discouraged apprentice
on the shoulder, and sometimes
give her a hug to calm her down
when she fidgeted and lost focus.
The 31-year-old is the founder of
the workshop which has taken in
16 members, all with disabilities,
to learn fruit-pit carving for free.
He shares the same misfortune
with Yan, just in a different form —
being diagnosed with mental illness
since grade three in primary school.
When one door closed, another
opened. Ci has a gift for fruit-pit
carving. With the help of his
father, he was lucky to learn the
craft from Li Yongli, an accom-
plished maestro in Shenyang.
“I could tell his condition from
day one, but I liked the boy very
much. And he was much more
focused and worked harder than
normal kids,” Li says.With rapid progress made, Ci
earned several awards with his
works of art, which were sought by
enthusiastic collectors. The carved
olive stone bracelets he made
often sold for more than 20,
yuan (about $2,908)
Having found success in fruit-pit
carving, Ci came up with the idea of
running a workshop and giving free
lessons on the crafts to disabled
people like him to help them.
With the support of the local dis-
abled persons’ federation, Ci
founded his studio in 2016.
Yan was among Ci’s first students.
She calls him the “young master”.
She was paid 800 yuan for her
first piece of work and bought her
90-year-old mom a mobile phone
for the elderly, which has an audio
prompt to identify the caller.
More than one million people
with disabilities in China over-
came poverty in 2018. And master-
ing a skill not only helped them to
improve their financial situation,
but more importantly, brought
them confidence and hope.
Dong Xiaoguang, a retired jewel-
er who suffers from polio, rides for
more than an hour every day on his
electric wheelchair to Ci’s workshop.
“Carving is a kind of activity that
requires communicating with oth-
ers, and I enjoy the process of
learning and the chatting.”
The young master and his 16
apprentices have organized many
carving charity bazaars over the
past three years and donated more
than 100,000 yuan to institutions
like the disabled persons’ federa-
tion.XINHUACi Xiang (front) teaches fruit-pit carving at his workshop, which
has taken in 16 members, all with disabilities, to learn the handi-
craft for free. XINHUA PHOTOSCi Xiang works on a piece of
fruit-pit carving.Dong Xuxi, 22, with her prosthetic leg, participates in various outdoor activities, such as running and skiing. Dong’s optimism has turned her
into a star on the Chinese short-video app, Douyin, encouraging people to overcome adversity in life. PHOTOS PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILYI hope that by watching my videos, more
people like me will refrain from thinking that
they are incapable and know that they can
actually walk and run normally ...”
Dong Xuxi, amputee and internet star