Gao Yunhua was serving as a volunteer in Shichahai, a scenic area in Beijing, on Saturday, when the Paralympic Games opened.

In her first volunteer day, the 27-year-old, with her blue T-shirt soaked in sweat, tried her best to enounce every single word to the tourists coming for help.

But when some realized that they were talking to a brain paralysis sufferer, they said "Thank you!" and leave soon. So soon that they could hardly tell what she was trying to say.

"Anyway, for the disabled, the city has become more tolerant," she said, wiping beads of sweat with her quivering hands.

With the same quivering hands, Gao passed a piece of paper to her fellow volunteers, asking them to write down their names and telephone numbers.

"Everyone, disabled or healthy, wants to make friends," she said.

An accounting major, Gao obtained her undergraduate diploma from the local Beijing Union University with great perseverance. In the next two years, she failed the graduate school entrance examinations twice because of her slow writing speed.

She is now serving as a celebrity civil servant with the district government, introducing the country's preferential policy to the disabled in her community.

"To my understanding, the disabled is by no means the disadvantaged group," she said. "Compared with the healthy, we are just encountered with different problems."

In the night of the exhausting day, she and her elder sister, who is also inflicted with the brain malfunction, sat in front of the TV set to watch the opening ceremony of the Beijing Paralympics where more than 4,000 disabled athletes from 147 countries and regions participated.

Also glued to the opening ceremony were more than 80 blind people, who huddled in a small room barely 20 square meters in size, listening attentively.

A man named Dawei was narrating to them on the procession of the grand ceremony, in the way he has been narrating for them films in the past years.

"It's like a festival for us, the most important one in my life," said Yang Zhengyu, a blind woman who got up at six o'clock and managed to reach Xinmu (Eyes of the heart) Cinema after a two hours' journey.

Dawei, founder of the cinema, said he wanted to bring his blind audience to the Bird's Nest, the National Stadium, where he could let them "see" what happened in the ceremony.

Although only about 70 percent of the Paralympics tickets were sold, free tickets for Dawei was still unattainable.

"Paralympics come and go. But I hope the care for the disabled will stay," he said.

In a country with 83 million disabled people, there will never be too much care needed.

Su Kuiyue neared his ears onto a radio. He wanted to grasp every sound from the opening ceremony.

Having lost his sight 20 years ago, the 34-year-old became a massagist, the most popular job for the blind in the country.

He massaged for an average of six clients everyday and earn a moderate salary of 2,000 yuan (around US$300) every month.

To save every penny, Su went back to visit his family members in Hebei, a neighboring province of Beijing, only once every year.

But what tortured him most is not the distance from his family members, but the suspicion and prejudice.

"Every time when my clients asked me whether I am really a blind, I would take off my glasses and give them enough time to check," he said. "It was really a hard time."

Su said he has been fond of swimming since his childhood.

"I don't think there is anything else that could excite me as much as to dive in the beautiful Water Cube one day," he said, referring to the National Aquatic Center.

Once a top-ranking fence player in the country, Li Hong, 46, watched the opening ceremony with a pity in the wheelchair.

"If I were five years younger, I would have been selected to compete for my country at the Paralympics," she said.

But the Games did bring her and the disabled in the city joy.

Beijing has installed more facilities for the disabled, including the specially designed taxis and newly extended sidewalks for the visually impaired, to make their daily life more convenient.

Before the largest sports gala for the disabled around world, the host city has announced a plan to expand the accessibility facilities to altogether 5,000 families with disabled members by 2010.

(Xinhua News Agency September 7, 2008)

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