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LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL
A typical workday for Liu starts at 6:30 a.m. After getting ready, she waits for her best friend and colleague Mao Yanhong to drive her to work.
She spends her morning typing out lecture notes and the minutes from sessions with troubled students. With the help of talking software, she uses the computer expertly and can type more words per minute than most of her colleagues.
Most of her classes are in the afternoon. She has three rules for her students: "Be relaxed, laugh a lot and learn something."
After dinner, she listens to the news. "Sometimes I hear my name in the local news and soon enough, my mother will comment, 'Oh no, your pancake face is not so pretty on the screen.' She's always teasing me for my round face," Liu says.
Then follows 40 minutes on the treadmill, after which she takes a shower and begins her evening writing session on her computer, which often lasts until 11 p.m. She wants to publish more books.
Liu writes about herself, her colleagues and students. She remembers the distant past and clings to every detail.
"Everything is so fine and life is beautiful," according to a passage in one of her books. "I remember the dust coming out from my bedspread and pillow. I used to complain about it but nowadays, every dust cloud seems like a dancing life, and how I long to see them dance in the sunshine again."
A few months ago, Liu received a letter from a retiree in the central province of Hunan. The man, having read her story in a local newspaper, offered to donate one of his eyes so Liu could see again.
She cried as her colleague read it to her. "The doctors say there's no hope for me to see again, but these loving people have made my life so beautiful."
BUILDING SELF-WORTH, AND CARRYING ON
In one of her latest poems, Liu wrote:
"Disability is my permanent mark,
but a smile is your gilded invitation.
Give me a hug,
and I'm the cloudless sky in your heart."
Liu has worked hard to stay confident and sure of herself.
"Many people are surprised that I'm so cheerful and confident," she says. "They may think a blind person is only entitled to sit on the street and play an instrument, with a bowl on the ground waiting for coins."
Rather than taking early retirement and living on a pension, Liu insisted on staying in her job and working like a normal person.
No one wants to pitied, Liu believes. "We should avoid excessive interference in other people's lives."
Liu and her colleagues once raised money to buy socks for children who live in some of Guizhou's poorest villages. "We thought their families could not afford to buy them socks."
The donations, however, were not well received.
"We were told later the children were used to walking barefoot and everybody thought socks were a nuisance. Moreover, because water was so scarce in the mountain villages it was wasteful to wash them."
Though poverty continues to hold back many parts of rural China, money and material objects are not the only solution, Liu insists.
In a recent survey, she found 68 percent of the left-behind children in her school wanted their parents' company more than more pocket money.
Seventy-seven percent of these children said they worried about their parents.
When asked about their parents' expectations of them, however, 68 percent said they believed their report cards were more important than their health.
Based on the results of the survey, Liu is analyzing the mental wellbeing of left-behind children, which she will share with schools and the local education authorities.
The idea for the survey came from a counselling session with one of her most problematic groups of seventh-graders: of the 44 students in that class, 26 were left-behind children.
"I handed out papers and envelopes and asked each of the 26 students to write a letter to their parents about their hopes and dreams," explains Liu.
One boy wrote that he dreamed of becoming a lawyer, so that he could help his parents claim their unpaid wages. Another girl said she dreamed of becoming a doctor because her heart ached when her parents came home ill or injured.
The most impressive letter was written by a boy who said he dreamed of being a migrant worker, just like his parents.
"Dear Mom and Dad," he wrote. "My dream is so small that you may feel disappointed. But I just want to be a migrant worker because in this way, I can follow you wherever you go and our family will be together forever."
Liu congratulated the children on their letters and showed them a scar on her thumbnail. "I had a lonely childhood just like you," she told them. "My father worked far from home and mother was not always around. I spent most of my preschool years sitting on the street waiting for them to come home."
Once, her father gave her a beautiful glass ball. One day, it rolled away from her and into a pile of garbage. In her haste to find that token of fatherly love, she caught her thumb on some rusty wire, leaving a permanent scar.
She also read to them some lines from one of her poems:
"The tribulation in front of your eyes is not really tough,
just conquer it;
the tribulation your heart can hold is not a tribulation for real,
just take it.
The roaring water will wash away the sand,
revealing pearls."
