What was your first reaction when it came to the profession of a blind person?
massagist? Tuner? Cloud customer service?
Or is there no concept at all?
"The eye can't see anything, what else can I do?"
This is a good question because it will ask a lot of people.
Photo 1: Photo of Cao Rui playing in Fuxian Lake, Yunnan
Today's protagonist is a 97-year-old blind boy named Cao Rui, who is a congenital glaucoma patient, blind in his left eye, 0.02 in his right eye, and seeing things is like a layer of water mist in the glass in the bathroom, hazy and unclear. The remaining weak vision was saved by the fact that he had undergone more than 30 surgeries in 23 years and spent millions of dollars, fighting against the darkness, breaking the shackles of the visual impairment, and becoming the goal of the first half of his life.
Now he is a guitar teacher, the feeling of playing the guitar makes people often forget that he is a blind man, and he opened a health care hall in his side business, and at the same time worked part-time as a blind product planner.
"I accept everything that fate has given me, but I will never compromise", this is Cao Rui.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="17" > "watery eyes" turned out to be cancer in eye diseases</h1>
The first time you see Cao Rui, the first thing you notice is his big eyes and long eyelashes, and Cao Rui was born with these "big watery eyes".
He is the first child in the family, but also the hope of the family, no one can think of the misfortune behind this pair of "big eyes" - congenital glaucoma, due to the increase in intraocular pressure led to the enlargement of the diseased eyeball, corneal dilation, so that the eyes will be larger than the average child.
The enviable long eyelashes are also caused by the side effects of daily eye drops for 18 years from the age of 5 to the present. The harsh nicknames of "cow's eye" and "blind man" are the names that Cao Rui often heard when he was a child, but you don't feel any haze from his conversation, but are attracted by the sunny youthfulness revealed on his face, as well as his cleverness and intelligence.
Picture 2: The world in the eyes of glaucoma (the small picture on the top right shows the real environment)
Before the age of 5, Cao Rui's eyes were both visionary, but unfortunately a medical accident occurred during surgery in the same year, resulting in blindness in his left eye, and although the visual field of view of his right eye was small, his vision after the glasses could reach 0.8.
Relying on this eye, Cao Rui's academic performance has always been among the best, and the teacher often regards him as a role model in the class, stubbornness in his bones, and the "cow temper" of not accepting defeat, so that he is focused on learning, just to prove that he is not worse than other children.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="118" > eyesight was sentenced to death, "I was blind, more than 10 years of efforts were wasted" </h1>
On Children's Day when he was 12 years old, Cao Rui saw that other children had talent performances, but he couldn't do anything, he was very envious, and under the introduction of his family, he coincidentally met his master, who was also visually impaired. On the first day of learning the piano, Master told Cao Rui: "Congenital glaucoma will one day become blind, and you must learn to play blindly."
Cao Rui also follows the master's teachings, practice the piano especially hard, every day after school home to start practicing the piano, the holiday can practice 7, 8 hours a day, or even longer, fingers from full of blood bubbles to grind out calluses, can not see the musical score, the master will read each note to him, repeated practice, until the formation of muscle memory, hard work plus talent, Cao Rui passed the guitar 10th grade in the second year of junior high school, and also won the Chinese dream show Yunnan Sea Selection Champion and relied on the guitar to be admitted to the affiliated middle school of Yunnan Academy of Arts.
Photo 3: Cao Rui's mother (right) and master (left) accompany Cao Rui to participate in the audition for the China Dream Show
In junior high school, Cao Rui's right eye vision also became worse and worse, once did 8 eye surgeries a year, vision dropped to 0.1, playing basketball can not find the position of the ball, with the computer can not find the mouse, learning to read is also a lot of effort, but this is not the worst ...
"Sooner or later, the glaucoma will not be able to see", this time bomb does not know when it will blow up the world in his eyes, the heavens did not let go of this boy because of his efforts, in the second year of high school, he was too high because of the eye pressure, the remaining vision of the right eye was gone, the school teacher advised him to quit school after the inspection, Cao Rui's life suddenly became gray and dark. When I was first admitted to the Affiliated Middle School of Yunnan Academy of Arts, the teacher was admitted to Cao Rui's excellent cultural class and love of music, and thought that he could be accompanied by music every day in the future, and could go further to the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, and his heart was extremely excited, when the last glimmer of light in his eyes disappeared, Cao Rui's dream of music academy also disappeared.
Although the ending was already predestined, when the darkness really came, he was dragged into the endless abyss. In order to keep the last glimmer of light in his eyes, he and his family have suffered too much over the years, and every time the disease occurs, the eyeballs are swollen and painful, causing headaches and nausea one after another, but the most unbearable is not the physical pain.
"My mother really suffered a lot for me," Cao Rui said, when he was in the second grade of primary school, his mother took him to Beijing to see a doctor, because he had to go to the hospital once a week to check up, in order to save money to see a doctor, he and his mother had to squeeze into a small basement of less than 10 square meters and lived for a whole year. After the operation, the eyes needed to be massaged every hour, and my mother set an alarm clock and waited at the school gate to wait for him to leave class. His parents were worried that no one would take care of Cao Rui when he was old, so they gave birth to a younger sister when he was 8 years old, hoping that the future sister would be able to take care of him who was blind.
"At that time I felt like a monster," he described himself, whenever exposed to the crowd, he would be afraid of others to see himself with either curiosity or disgust or sympathy or ridicule, he locked himself in the room, refused to communicate with anyone, fell into the internal friction of self-exclusion, and constantly struggled.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="121" > from despair to resistance, unable to change his fate, he began to change himself</h1>
Even if the light in his eyes disappears, the light of his relatives will always illuminate Cao Rui's life. Just half a year after he was blind, relatives, friends, and masters took turns to comfort him, and Master carefully enlightened him: "If you can't see you, you can still play the piano", Fa Xiao also called him out like a child, telling him: "Can't see, let's walk slowly together, it doesn't matter", and his mother's meticulousness, "even if you can't see your mother, you will take care of you for a lifetime." With everyone's encouragement, Cao Rui was finally willing to go out of the house and face the haze, as long as they were there, Cao Rui could live in the sun.
Picture 4: Cao Rui and his family go to the Yulong Snow Mountain to play together
Half a year after being blind, Cao Rui entered the Kunming Blind School, which surprised him that on the first day of enrollment, he actually asked for military training. Seems unheard of. The next day, about 200 visually impaired students wore camouflage uniforms and walked shoulder to shoulder in the playground, the visible was in front, the invisible was in the back, and the students in the back put their hands on the shoulders of the students in front of them to drive a "small train", and the neat footsteps and loud slogans violently impacted Cao Rui's panicked heart. Once "driving a small train", a classmate in the middle fell and fell a large piece of it one after another, and the inconvenience of life also made Cao Rui realize that the people who can see cannot be with him forever, and the most important thing in life is to rely on himself and must learn to live independently.
After Cao Rui gradually became familiar with everyone, he began to learn the way of life of blind people, such as blind canes, screen reading, travel, etc., and sometimes everyone got together to share their experience of stumbling after being blind, and with the help of everyone, he gradually adapted to life in the dark, braved through the darkness, and learned to live independently.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="122" > fingertips pluck not only notes, but also the future</h1>
After graduating from the blind school, Cao Rui successfully obtained the massage certificate and the blind doctor's certificate, and also received an acceptance notice from the acupuncture massage major of the Special Education College of Changchun University, but he gave up because he preferred the feeling of taking the guitar, and when playing the piano, others only paid attention to his piano sound, and forgot that he was a blind man. With his love for music and a firm belief in fighting against fate, he went to the strange ancient city of Lijiang with his guitar alone.
When he first arrived in Lijiang, it was not as smooth as Cao Rui imagined, the biggest problem was that he didn't know anything about the location of the ancient city of Lijiang, in order to find out the location, he decided to find a massage shop to work first, so he went door to door to find a massage shop to inquire, but the boss directly refused as soon as he heard about his vision. Helpless, he could only go online to find recruitment information and call one by one, probably contacted more than 30 people, and finally only found a foot massage shop, and the gap between part-time jobs did not stop practicing. Two months later, when he understood the location of the ancient city, he resigned and went to the bar to make a lot of income as a resident singer. But his parents in his hometown did not trust him to drift alone, so they took him home and advised him to do a massage, but he always refused to accept it, nor did he want to go out to find a massage job.
Photo 5: Cao Rui's singing bar in the ancient city of Lijiang
After spending nearly half a year at home, he began working as a guitar teacher at his master's piano shop. In order to better teach students, he memorized a whole book of teaching scores, students can accurately know which page and which line no matter where they play, and the music not only did not make Cao Rui starve to death but also let him have a good return.
Although Cao Rui's life is guaranteed by his love and hard work on the guitar, the income from relying on class fees is still not stable enough, so the master began to advise Cao Rui: "As long as you can play music, you will not die of hunger, but massage can become your last way of survival", and advised him not to resist the blind massage, blind people should learn massage well and should also explore more possibilities in life. Cao Rui and Master have known each other for 11 years, and the relationship between the two is also a teacher and a friend, he said that "Master is the noble man of his life", helping him walk through the darkness and accompanying him from infancy to maturity.
Under the advice of his master, Cao Rui re-applied for the correspondence course of acupuncture and massage at Beijing Union University, and opened a health center in Lijiang with friends, "There is no right or wrong choice in life, as long as you are willing to suffer, you will not die of hunger"!
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="123" > dare to fight to grasp the fate, and use technology to illuminate more "dark islands" </h1>
In the 18 years of fighting against darkness, Cao Rui has his own definition of happiness and life, he has found his love - guitar, and with love he has the current life, but his dream does not stop there. In 2020, invited by an Internet medical technology company in Beijing, he became a blind product planner, participating in the preliminary user research, product development and design and use feedback as a real user, and he hoped to integrate the power of science and technology into reality to help more visually impaired partners.
In 2020, he walked alone through six cities, spanning 2,700 kilometers from Colorful Yunnan to the capital Beijing, and he saw the sea for the first time with the blindness aids he participated in research and development, realizing the dream of measuring the world.
Photo 6: Photo taken by Cao Rui while on Gulangyu Island
Photo 7: Cao Rui took a photo while at the Nanjing Museum
At the same time, he helped more than 200 visually impaired partners to experience smart visual aids for free, carefully recorded the experience and feedback, and when he came into contact with each visually impaired partner, he would also share his experience of learning music and the concept of life with everyone. In the face of love, hard work and persistence are fair, and we hope that his pursuit of dreams can be passed on to more visually impaired partners and motivated them to bravely move forward towards their dreams.
Picture 8: Cao Rui helps users experience smart vision products for free
Cao Rui said that in the blind group, he is lucky, there are family members who support him, there are friends who accompany him, and there are more masters who follow the rules, but there are many blind people whose lives are full of hardships, and I hope that every visually impaired partner can not look down on himself, be uneasy with the status quo, and bravely pursue his dreams, so that he can be born to the sun and the future can be expected.