Another Really Memorable Para-Olympic Related Event

As the above bit of Chinglish shows—a former laowai teacher colleague during my first teaching job in Henan passed it on to me—the Middle Kingdom's attitudes vis-à-vis handicapped people could use some adjustment. However, like many other things in China, change for the better is taking place here. Having the Para-Olympic Games certainly helped raise public awareness and understanding on this issue. For example, lifts for wheelchairs were installed in all of Beijing's subway stations before the Para-Olympic games.

As part of the Para-Olympic Games opening celebrations, the China National Disabled People's Performing Arts Troupe put on a show at the Poly Theater. I've included a photo of this beautiful facility, which is located right on the Dongsishitiao Subway station and is about a half hour walk from where I live.

Our company gave all of the foreign workers free tickets to attend this show, and I was very happy to have the opportunity to go see it. It was a truly memorable and moving event; I have to confess that my eyes got more than a little misty toward the end of the performance.

The acts included singing by paraplegic and blind singers and a dance performance by blind people who were attached to each to form a human chain. Another highlight was a dance number that included two fellows missing both of their arms. These young men used their shoulders and feet to do interesting things with poles that had water buckets hanging from both their ends.

However, I think that the best highlight of the show was a traditional dance number done by beautiful young deaf women dancers. I shagged a photo of this act off the Troupe's website and place it blow in this post. Non-handicapped performers, of course, move to music while doing this dance, which one of my Chinese friends, Vivian Wang, told me was based on the Buddhist divinity, Kwan-Yi. This divinity is said to have a thousand arms, so the dancers will form a line, and do most of the motion in the dance with the arms, so to resemble this Buddhist figure. They move to music, and the deaf performers obviously couldn't do that, so they were cued with sign language by people standing off to the side of the stage.

It is impossible not to deeply admire the courage and fortitude shown by these people in overcoming their physical handicaps. I'm going to try very hard to keep them whenever I feel down or am dealing with some relatively minor problem in my own life.