Dot blue words to pay attention to "China Magazine for the Disabled"
Zhai Jin
Born in 1984 in Bengbu, Anhui Province, a patient with osteogenesis imperfection (commonly known as "porcelain dolls"), joined the "Symbiosis Good Dance Troupe" in 2018 to make a living from painting, and established Zhai Jin Animation Design Studio in 2019.
In the middle of summer in 2016, at 1 a.m. in Beijing, there were no pedestrians on the South Third Ring Road. Zhai Jin bid farewell to a friend who had a supper together and drove his electric wheelchair to prepare to go home, and the 1 km of driving alone gave the 32-year-old Zhai Jin a first taste of "the sense of accomplishment of living alone in Beijing". This kind of freedom and independence is a new experience that Zhai Jin has never pursued and has never had.
In the first 30 years of his life, Zhai Jin almost never left the care of his parents and relatives. Suffering from osteogenesis imperfecta, he has lost the ability to walk independently on his legs since he was a child, and people commonly call Zhai Jin such patients as "porcelain dolls", this total incidence of one in 10,000 to fifteen thousand rare diseases, also known as brittle osteopathy, according to the incidence estimates, there are currently more than 100,000 osteogenesis patients in China.
From his hometown of Anhui to Beijing to Guangzhou, from being trapped between square inches of houses by illness to being able to dance with able-bodied people in a wheelchair to having his own painting studio, Zhai Jin accepted himself with his wheelchair, dance and drawing board and admired himself, which was a compulsory course in his life.
After the diagnosis, the mother took meticulous care of Zhai Jin.
A porcelain doll that constantly fractures
In 1984, I was born in Bengbu City, Anhui Province. On the 3rd day of birth, my mother's girlfriend came to visit, and my aunt opened my bag and wanted to hold me, and I cried out in pain just after unbuttoning the quilt. Seeing my legs curled up unnaturally, my mother's aunt felt inappropriate and called a doctor to see me, and got a diagnosis of "broken legs". It was the first fracture in my life, and until I was 8 years old, I experienced at least 10 fractures, large and small, every year.
Zhai Jin's father was a soldier, and the family of three lived in the military compound, and the neighbors were close to each other. Zhai Jin often painted on the ground of the compound.
My father was a soldier, a family of three living in a military compound, and neighbors were very close. After the meal, the family often gathered together to chat, I look cute and clever, there are always elders who can't help but come forward to hug and tease. Some people did not know my illness, often hugged and upside down, I broke my bones, my father was often angry at people for this, and my mother was on the side to comfort, saying that those who did not know were not strange.
Because of my poor health, I didn't go to kindergarten. After the age of 5, my body stopped growing and I became a "porcelain doll" that "lived up to its name". At that time, I was very active and mischievous, and I did not understand the difference between myself and other children, and once I accidentally bumped into it, I had to rest for half a month to let the fracture grow. When my parents were working, I was often locked in the house alone. Activities with a "less dangerous factor" such as painting and watching cartoons have become one of my few entertainment choices. My parents were very supportive of my drawing, and Bought me brushes of different thicknesses and styles, and my room became a drawing board, and I would draw what I thought of and see, and I would copy cartoon characters in cartoons. Painting seems to be the only thing I like and do.
When I was 9 years old, the dust finally settled on what my father had fought for me for two years. After making the promise that "children are not responsible for injuries at school", I was able to enroll as a first-year student. At that time, I was 2 or 3 years older than my classmates, and the teacher told my classmates not to fight with me in order to avoid accidental injury, and everyone was afraid to stay away from me for the first few months. But I finally stepped out of the house, curious and excited, and I wanted to prove myself, and finally opened up the social circle by relying on the painting strength I practiced at home, and became "someone else's child" through word of mouth. But at that time, I was not happy, I always felt that this praise was based on my physical disability, and they set a low standard for me, which was naturally easy to achieve. The teacher also encouraged the other students with the words "With Zhai Jin here, you should work harder", so I began to have a rebellious mood and felt like a mascot.
After I started junior high school, I began to have emotional instability, long-term colds, and broken wrists. Things followed during adolescence: not being able to keep up with the school curriculum, and traveling farther away increased the burden on my mother to send me to school. In desperation, I dropped out of school in my second year of junior high school.
From the first pot of gold to independence
After dropping out of school, I was depressed for a long time, not only because of the pain of illness, but also because I saw that my parents seemed to have lost their expectations of me, and I began to get used to the "discrimination" that I would be subjected to as a disabled person. The only thing I tried to fight for for myself was to want a computer, and my father didn't want to see me waste my life, and under my repeated requests, my father spent 5800 yuan to buy me a Lenovo computer. A network cable connected me to the outside world, and at first I was addicted to reading Wikipedia, and I could switch from one entry to another at will, during which time I taught myself a lot of literature and history that I had not been exposed to before. I also look up the drawing aspect. In 2003, I started teaching myself Flash animation through an online tutorial.
Zhai Jin taught himself Flash animation in his room.
After studying for a while, I saw the news that a Xinjiang singer was soliciting animation MVs, and the manuscript fee was 5,000 yuan. I listened to the song over and over again in front of the computer, designing the picture frame by frame according to the lyrics, and my first Flash work was born, and the song called "BarangZai" was looped in my room for two months. Soon, I received a phone call asking for my bank account information, and my family told me to be careful not to disclose my personal information and then be deceived. When I actually received the 5,000 yuan in manuscript fees, they affirmed my work for the first time. Later, I also got a call from the Xinjiang singer, who said that he liked my work very much, not like a beginner's level.
It was my first pot of gold, and the first time I had the "real material" to prove to my parents that I wasn't just in my room doing nothing. Later, I also did several works, but I slowly felt the difference between technology and art, the creation became boring, and the income from participating in design competitions was extremely unstable. Under the pressure of my parents, I opened an online store and worked as a customer service, but I knew that it was not what I really wanted to do, and the feeling of achieving nothing made me suffer and it was time to change myself.
In 2013, Zhai Jin participated in the national "Porcelain Doll Patient Conference" for the first time.
Listening to my mother, the old orthopedic doctor who first treated me was even a little excited when he met me, because he had only seen cases in medical texts and had never seen the "live-action version", and I was probably the first case in Anhui Province. There are no people in my circle of life who are similar to me, not even disabled. Until 2008, I joined the porcelain doll forum and met several patients, but I didn't like to make friends with people across the screen, and I always felt that it was unreal. In 2013, I plucked up the courage to come to Beijing to participate in the "Porcelain Doll Patient Conference" for the first time. Here I really made friends who had similar experiences to myself, and I also saw the possibility of more lifestyles for porcelain dolls.
In 2014, the "Porcelain Doll Center" wanted to launch a six-month self-reliance project for the disabled in Beijing, but for various reasons, my parents were very opposed to me traveling alone, so I had to give up. The next year, at the "Porcelain Doll Conference" in Jinan, a little girl who was not yet an adult shared her self-reliant life, and I thought that my situation was much better than hers, and I also wanted to be self-reliant. I talked to my parents several times, and finally the request "You can still take care of me now, but when you are old and no one is making a fool of myself, I don't even have a chance to try" impressed my father. In May 2016, my father personally sent me to Beijing to participate in the self-reliance living project. On the day I first arrived, my father taught me how to use the rice cooker and washing machine in our rental house, and watched me cook my own rice, so I left the instructions of "if there is something to call, if you can't go home", I went back to Anhui.
In Beijing, my biggest fear at the beginning was crossing the street. The agency of the self-reliance life project is in the South Third Ring Road, and as early as my home was preparing to come to Beijing, I used Google Maps to clearly mark the traffic lights of the surrounding roads, and each intersection was a challenge. In order to make life more convenient, I changed into an electric wheelchair and also tried to do simple exercises to exercise my limbs and learn to move at home.
In November 2016, I received a phone call from home that my grandmother, who had brought me up, had passed away, and I was bent on going home to attend my grandmother's funeral. But my parents were too busy to take care of me and told me not to run around. But I was my grandmother's eldest grandson, and I had to go back to deliver her, and that was the first time I had returned to Jing County, Anhui Province, by train from Beijing alone against my parents' wishes. Since then, my parents have supported me to stay in Beijing and live alone. Once again, I picked up a paintbrush and helped some non-profit organizations paint to make a living. Although I don't make much money, it is my external and inner growth together, and the sense of accomplishment I get makes me feel more comfortable and confident than making money.
In 2019, Zhai Jin set up his own painting studio and also registered his trademark "A Jin Like Yan Painting".
Dance while painting
In the years in Beijing, I was exposed to dance for the first time, and Mr. Maruzai invited several disabled people, including me, to dance a "symbiosis dance" together. In fact, for my physical condition, dancing is very dangerous, but I am very willing to try. Symbiosis dance requires that people with different physical conditions and different techniques and characteristics be exposed to each other through simple instructions in improvised music under the same theme, and dance together in a common space. Symbiosis dance is not a choreography for special groups of people, but to create a stage where anyone can dance together.
The active genes that were suppressed because of the pain were released during the dance process, and from the beginning I only dared to stretch my hands and feet in the wheelchair, to the later time I could roll on the ground to do movements, I not only did not feel uncomfortable, but I liked my concentration and seriousness when immersed in dance. In ordinary life, people basically only use their ears and eyes to receive information from others, use their mouths or words to express themselves, but in the symbiosis dance, it is to use touch, body temperature, strength, movement to receive and express, dancers through body temperature, skin, breathing, strength to distinguish the people around them, everyone can make Mu Ne's sleeping body feel activated and awakened.
Once we co-created a dance score, out of trust in the dance partner, I agreed to the idea of the able-bodied dance partner lying on top of me to make a dance move, and finally we completed the action. This success brought me a great shock, when dancing, I was no different from others, I recognized my body for the first time, and then liked my body. By dancing, my otherwise vulnerable body also became more powerful. I wrote a dance called "Record" to express that "I became a piece of text and was written into a book." I moved my wheelchair flexibly, navigating through bookcases large and small, as if looking for something, and finally slipped into one of the boxes of the bookcase, curled myself up in dimly lit places. Symbiosis dance is like this, not only can it have a relationship with people, but also can complete the expression with the help of the environment.
Zhai Jin moved from Beijing to Guangzhou and became part of the "Symbiosis Good Dance Troupe".
In September 2017, I was invited to Guangzhou to participate in a symbiosis dance performance, and as "Dancer Ajin", I was fully integrated into the team that danced together at that time, so when the team decided to set up the "Symbiosis Good Dance Company", I also moved from Beijing to Guangzhou and became a part of it. I rented a small single room near the dance company, where life and work were basically completed, of course, I did not put down my paintbrush.
Together with Maruko, I launched the "People Paint People" public welfare activity, inviting the painters to pick up paintbrushes to paint the people on the other side in the café, and then share the works when the time comes. The first event involved 15 people and the results were very good. I hope that everyone can put down their mobile phones, put down the huge amount of information that is not important in the distance, and focus on the people who are within reach around them, that is what we should cherish.
In 2019, I set up my own painting studio, also registered my own trademark "AJin Like Face Painting", opened a small shop for custom painting online, and went down the line to catch up with the cultural and creative markets of major shopping malls in Guangzhou, giving customers portraits, and also drawing some small comic works. I love the feeling of converting people from three dimensions to two dimensions, and in the process, I will give up the things that are only superficial, and only what is left on the paper is what best represents them under my observation, and that thing is the most precious thing that distinguishes them from the public.
Being both a cartoonist and a dancer, this is my definition of myself now. The porcelain doll is just the manifestation of my body, and I am the sum of the mind and the body. As when I was a child, I didn't want people to appreciate me because I was a disabled person who could draw and dance, but I wanted them to acknowledge my specialness because of my hard work and my love.
Source 丨China Magazine for Persons with Disabilities(ID:zgcjrzzs)
Wen 丨 Liu Liu
Figure 丨 Provided by the interviewee
Editor 丨 Zhang Shuai
★ Please indicate the source of the reprint
Are you also "watching"?