May 19, 2024, is the 34th National Day for the Disabled. Liu Daming and his colleagues are working as partners at a service center for the disabled in Beijing's Xicheng District, where they are not patients, but are working on a public welfare project to provide medical assistance to patients with rare diseases in minors. This year is the fifth year of Liu Daming's entrepreneurship, and it is also the beginning of his shift from a part of the company's business to public welfare projects.
Reporter Dong Qian: Have you ever encountered such a question or question mark, you may be a person who needs help from others, why do you want to help more people?
Liu Daming: Because I feel that as a recipient, I have received a lot of help. When you have received full love, you can't just enjoy it, you need to receive it and give it back.
Liu Daming suffers from a rare form of osteogenesis imperfecta, commonly known as "porcelain doll", which is a skeletal system disease caused by genetic mutations, in which patients have fragile bones and are prone to fractures, and there is no cure worldwide. After 11 major surgeries, Liu Daming is only 1.4 meters tall and weighs more than 20 kilograms. Fortunately, his physical condition is relatively stable after the operation, and he does not need to take medication or receive further treatment, and can maintain a constant state to study, work and live.
Liu Daming: I have been able to get to where I am today, in fact, mainly thanks to four aspects. The first is therapy, the second is that I have a higher education, the second is that I have a high-quality employment, and the last is my mental health, these four things have made me who I am today despite my genetic mutations. So when I was able to live a good life myself, I had an idea one day that if a person has no way to speak up for the same group as him in his life, or strive for better life opportunities, then his life is destined to be boring.
Liu Daming: I have a particularly firm core value called self-reliance and altruism. Self-reliance is a person who should have the ability to accept and face his innate defects, except for me Liu Daming, different people in this world are encountering different difficulties, so it cannot be said that physical defects are unfortunate or the only difficulties in life. Second, a person should help more people like him to overcome these things based on his own experience and experience of overcoming the problems and confusions in life.
Before starting his business, Liu Daming was already famous. He is a young writer, and at the age of 19 he published his personal autobiography "Above Destiny", and was once named a "national model of self-improvement"; I went to study abroad in a wheelchair, studied at the Department of Psychology at the University of Manchester in the UK, and chose to return to China to start a business after graduation.
On the Lantern Festival in 2021, Liu Daming uploaded his first short video to tell his life story.
Liu Daming: There is a fan who left me a message, he said Hello Daming, before seeing your story, I especially wanted to give up my life, after reading your story, I found that there are people in this world who live so badly, so I don't want to give up.
Through short videos and live broadcasts, Liu Daming continues to launch psychology-related content, taking positive psychology as the main direction of entrepreneurship. But he has not always been so determined, and in the five-year entrepreneurial process, Liu Daming has also experienced many adjustments to himself and his business.
Liu Daming: I was more exclusive at the beginning, and people only got the label of inspirational from me. Because I think life is a process of self-reliance, I have nothing special, it is just a process of self-reliance, and everyone should be self-reliant. One of my best wishes to the world is that you don't need to be special, you don't need to be small, you just need to be the middle of the ordinary and the great.
Born in 1994 to a military family in Lanzhou, Gansu Province, Liu was diagnosed with osteogenesis imperfecta, and doctors asserted that he would not live to be 12 years old, but his parents insisted that he go to school like an able-bodied child. Because he is prone to fractures, Liu Daming's school career is often accompanied by wheelchairs and surgeries.
When he was in junior high school, Liu Daming's spine began to deform, from the initial soreness to the pressure on the heart, lungs, stomach and even nerves, and finally had to leave school and undergo two major surgeries in three months. After the operation, he was put in a cast from chest to ankle, and the whole person was immobilized like a mummy for 183 days.
Living like a mummy for 183 days made Liu Daming realize that he was different from others, but it was during this period that he found a way to make himself feel happy.
At the age of 18, Liu Daming's condition deteriorated again, his spine was seriously deformed into a huge S-shape, the entire stomach was squeezed into thin strips, and the only intact eye began to become blurred. However, the strong desire to survive made Liu Daming start the road of self-salvation. He holds an English dictionary and translates his medical records word by word, writes e-mails to the best spine experts in the world, and looks for opportunities for surgery.
After being introduced, Liu Daming contacted an authoritative hospital in Italy. Three weeks later, he received a reply from the hospital, in which the doctor mentioned that the operation had a 40% mortality rate, and even if the operation was successful, 50% of the complications would accompany him for life, so he politely refused to perform the operation for Liu Daming. Liu Daming replied to the doctor in Italy overnight, stating his experience and attaching a transcript. Eventually, his resume impressed the doctors, who decided to take a risk for Liu. On October 2, 2012, in Milan, Italy, Liu Daming underwent 10 and a half hours of spinal reconstruction surgery. He had 13 screws and two titanium rods punched into his body. The operation was declared a success, and he finally no longer had to lie in bed all day, and his swallowing and breathing functions were greatly improved. Half a year later, Liu Daming returned to school.
Liu Daming: I can now obtain a kind of happiness, which is that I can continue to learn knowledge from birth to death, and when the level of knowledge goes up, my value will be gained. Once I have value, my body can no longer be a reason to hold me back.
While not falling behind in his homework, Liu Daming did something that seemed almost paranoid to others. He overturned the 60,000-odd words of his autobiography that he had written after three years of painstaking work, and began to rewrite it word by word during his lunch break and two hours after 12 p.m.
In eight months, Liu Daming wrote and completed a 175,000-word personal autobiography "Above Destiny". In November 2013, "Above the Destiny" was published by the People's Publishing House. At this time, another dream beckoned to him not far away. After the college entrance examination in 2014, Liu Daming applied to study for a bachelor's degree in psychology at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. However, the young lady who has been taking care of his daily life has been denied a visa 4 times, and Liu Daming cannot afford to hire a high-priced employee of 8,000 yuan a day, so he has to apply for an extension of enrollment. At that time, everyone thought that Liu Daming's dream of studying abroad was going to fail, but he did not give up.
Reporter Dong Qian: It is said that many able-bodied people encounter this kind of obstacle, even if I don't go, then why do you bite it and don't let it go?
Liu Daming: Your life is what you choose to live this way, so you have to have the responsibility to make it to the end. So I did another thing, I spent eight months writing letters to the Queen, the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary, I got a lawyer myself, I read through the immigration law in the UK, and finally I found a loophole that could be argued legally, and then we wrote it in and granted me a visa.
In 2019, Liu graduated from the University of Manchester with a degree in psychology. He rejected his mentor's invitation to continue his studies and chose to return to China to start his own business.
For Liu Daming, entrepreneurship is not only a profession, but also a process of experiencing life. However, the process has not been without its challenges.
Reporter Dong Qian: What is the most difficult thing for you to start a business?
Liu Daming: To know oneself and to shrink oneself. It's a good thing to be confident in the beginning, but as we develop and grow, we find that overconfidence can prevent us from hearing our true voice.
Today, Liu Daming is not only busy with his own entrepreneurial projects, but also employed as a tenured professor at Ningxia Institute of Technology. At the beginning of 2024, Liu Daming's short video has not been updated for a while. During the pause, Liu Daming once again made in-depth reflections on himself and entrepreneurship.
Liu Daming: I saw Mr. Cai Lei, which touched me a lot, and I think he is a very brave person. Whether or not he himself will eventually be able to conquer the disease, he has left his name in the matter of mankind challenging ALS. If a person has the courage to shoot his last bullet, his purpose is only for the people behind him, no longer suffer such a strong bullet rain, then this is an extremely remarkable thing, so I was thinking that maybe starting a business for me, if I keep starting a business, it seems that I am so lacking, so monotonous, so small.
Reporter Dong Qian: You don't even think it's interesting to start a business?
Liu Daming: Maybe compared to the pain and suffering I have experienced, maybe entrepreneurship is not the thing I should pay special attention to, maybe I haven't found the final answer to life, maybe entrepreneurship is just a process for me to complete that ultimate mission.
A month ago, Liu Daming just passed his 30th birthday, and in his first year, while trying to help more patients with rare diseases, he continued to think and pursue the ultimate answer to life.
(CCTV News Client)