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Interview with Hong Kong's Blind YouTuber "Bread": I have no vision but vision

2022-05-12T06:25:04.634Z


If you are in a dark room, can you quickly find the switch to turn on the light without tripping over it? Or cover your eyes with a black cloth, you can use your smartphone to accurately and quickly send messages, take photos, and scan for peace of mind


If you are in a dark room, can you quickly find the switch to turn on the light without tripping over it?

Or cover your eyes with a black cloth, can you use your smartphone to accurately and quickly send messages, take photos, and travel with peace of mind?

Maybe while you're still looking for the location of the lights and the app, Bread, now in his 40s, who is totally blind, has already done all the steps.

Not only has he mastered electronics, taught the visually impaired to use smartphones at a community center, competed in dragon boat races, and even set up a camera to become a YouTuber.

He tells us from his own experience that life can be colorful even if we can't see it.


Bread had a round face when he was a child. When he was in kindergarten, an elder brother would play with him and pinch his face. He thought his face was round, so he called him "Bread".

When he was born, Bread could still see some light in his eyes and could distinguish different colors, so he knew that the sunset was orange, like salted egg yolk, and that beautiful scene was still vivid in his mind.

But when he was in his teens, his only remaining vision disappeared completely for no reason, and he could only rely on childhood memories for concepts such as light and color.

Apart from bread, his parents, younger sister, four younger brothers, half-brother and older sister are all able-bodied persons.

In order to give him better care, his parents sent him to the Xinguang Home and School for the Blind when he was four years old and started boarding life.

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Click the picture to see the interesting content of the bread video▼▼▼

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Blind since childhood, bullied, low self-esteem, depression

When Bun was a child, his family lived in a village house in San Tin, Yuen Long. Once, when he came home from vacation, the naughty and playful children in the village bullied him and threw a dead mouse on his feet when he knew that he had poor eyesight. , At the age of seven, he was so frightened that he fell ill.

After that, he had a great shadow on the mice. If someone asked him to open the drawer, he would not dare to open the drawer because he was afraid that there were mice in it. He would not even touch the plush toys in Toys R Us because the texture would make him Think of mice.

Even if someone told him it was just a Mickey Mouse doll, he would shrink his hands unconsciously: "When I think of a mouse or that picture when I was a kid, I get goosebumps and goosebumps." This kind of fear permeated his entire childhood and lingered. .

Although he was able to avoid the bullies in the village at Xinguang boarding school, there was another big enemy waiting for bread - his first-grade head teacher.

The teacher at Xinguang School often beat him with a wooden ruler and made him stand.

He remembers that the first English word he learned back then was "Lazy": "She said I was lazy, she said L and she pushed my forehead, making me take a step back, and after she said LAZY, I took 4 steps back. "At that time, the school stipulated that except for the music subject, the same teacher was in charge of all other subjects, so that year, the bread lived in the claws of the teacher every day.

Even though he was in Secondary 1 and 2, his heart beat faster when he met the teacher again, and he just wanted to leave quickly.

It's a pity that there were no peers who could accompany him through those melancholy years.

At that time, Bread was silent and introverted, and he didn't want to be friends with blind people at all, because he felt that blind people's life was boring, and making friends with more blind people would only make his life more static.

In addition, he was relatively precocious since he was a child, and he would ask questions such as "why can others see it, but I can't?", which made him pay more attention to his own flaws.

He began to hate himself, isolated himself, and even ran to the roof of the school by himself since he was a fourth grader, looking into the hazy distance through the barbed wire.

When he was young, he didn't know how to express, and in fact he was already on the verge of depression.

Circumstance change solves depression, natural talent must be useful

The teacher of Xinguang School for the Blind noticed that he was unwilling to communicate with others, and would run to the rooftop by himself. When he was in the fourth grade of primary school, he asked the nurse in the dormitory to take him to see a psychiatrist, and started drug treatment, which was not stopped until the third grade. .

After completing the junior high school courses, due to the excellent grades of Bread, he was arranged by Xinguang School to transfer to St. Paul's College when he was in the fourth year of high school.

The change of environment and the help of drugs made him cheerful, and he also took the initiative to participate in the Chinese Debating Team and other on-campus clubs and activities, which helped him gradually get out of the haze of depression, and successfully entered and graduated from the Polytechnic University.

Although Bread is congenitally blind, it has an extraordinary sense of space and direction.

Since he was 10 years old, he would go from his home in Yau Ma Tei at that time to and from the dormitory of Xinguang School for the Blind in Pok Fu Lam every weekend. subjects) more often get A-levels, or even go shopping in the supermarket, canoeing, running... Everything seems impossible to him, and he is also able to do it with ease.

He joked that this is a talent, otherwise it would be impossible to learn without a teacher, and he even called himself "the best blind man in Hong Kong".

Ordinary people can climb a dragon boat, I can do it

Excellent action and learning ability help Bread break through the limitation of vision, experience things that are difficult for ordinary blind people to touch, and broaden their horizons.

Once the Blind People's Association held a dragon boat event, the coach in charge saw that the bread had a good balance and a burly body, so he invited him to participate.

However, he knew it as soon as he learned it. The coach felt that it was a waste to continue to stay in the "half volunteer and half disabled" team, so he encouraged him to join the ordinary dragon boat team and receive regular training and competition.

So, he joined the "Du Rufeng Dragon Boat Team" and became the only blind player in the team.

Bread said that when climbing a dragon boat, hearing is more important than sight.

When you hear someone get off the hull twice, the whole team should hold their breath, concentrate and prepare to start.

At the beginning of the game, you must concentrate on listening to when your teammates' paddles fall into the water and into the water, in order to match the rhythm and fall in unison.

Once distracted, the front and rear paddles can easily collide, and "the paddles worth more than 1,000 yuan will be scrapped."

Bread is very friendly with the members of the "Dragon Boat Team", and the training process has also taught him how to get along with others.

(Used with permission from University Line)

Perhaps it was because he knew from a young age that he wanted to be friends with able-bodied people, and Bread soon became acquainted with the teammates of the "Du Rufeng Dragon Boat Team" and established a deep friendship.

After joining the dragon boat team for 4 years, in addition to training together, they also organize social activities such as running and rock climbing, and teammates will help him by the side.

With his diligent training attitude, he has also become the spiritual pillar of the team: "A blind person can do it, and if they work hard and don't say they are tired, they have no reason to lose to me!"

Barrier-free digital experts, KOLs in the blind world

The big and small things in real life are less than bread, what about the electronic world?

It turns out that as early as 2006, he began to teach himself to use the Nokia N73, a popular smartphone at the time. Today, whether it is using the IPhone to send messages or take pictures for others, bread can easily do it.

In 2019, the Hong Kong Blind People's Association invited him to be the instructor of a smartphone training class, teaching the blind to use the phone once or twice a week.

During the epidemic, Bread will also answer questions about the use of the phone by the visually impaired through the China Association's telephone hotline, and will release audio recordings from time to time in the Association's announcements to teach the blind to travel safely and set up the KMB App (KMB App). ) drop-off tips, etc.

Bread's familiarity with smartphones not only keeps him up to date with current events and trends, but also gives him the opportunity to shoot YouTube videos.

One of his friends is a member of the YouTube channel "WeTV Accessible Media". Seeing that Bread is one of the few blind people who are proficient in smartphones, she invited him to be the host of the channel and started his filming journey for more than three years.

Bread has his own principles as to what content to shoot, and he will reject any subject that others have photographed that he feels is boring.

A staff member once suggested to shoot a video of another host chatting with him while driving. He thought this format was neither new nor boring, so he refused on the grounds that "the driver is not holding the disc between his legs". .

His meticulous attitude has made him repeatedly outstanding.

In the film, he uses his keen sense of hearing to distinguish whether tea or water is poured out, and without opening the box, he can only distinguish different McDonald's hamburgers by the shape of the packaging box, and even the nine bends and thirteen bends in the Tsuen Wan Bay shopping mall. In the corridor, he demonstrated how to avoid all obstacles and walk into the disabled toilet. These innovative videos made more people know him.

One year after filming on YouTube, Bread opened a Facebook personal page "Bread No Eyes" at the request of the WeTV team. Currently, there are more than 3,000 "flour" (the name of fans).

In order to reduce the typos in the post, Bread also has its own tricks. For example, when he wants to enter "Miss Huang", he will first enter "Gold" by voice, then delete "Gold", and add the word "Miss" to ensure that he It will not be called "Miss Wang".

In addition, he will attach a correct and clear photo to each post. Sometimes the photos are downloaded from Google, sometimes they are taken through the image description function of the iPhone, and only a few photos are done by others.

Operating these platforms not only enables the public to better understand the life of the blind, but also enables the invisible person to experience the world step by step.

Become a happy and confident ordinary person with online friends

Blindness and bullying had traumatized Bread so much that when he was in his 20s and 30s, every time he came home, he would not take the same lift with strangers for fear of other people's eyes. He would pretend Go to the mailbox to get the letter, wait until the elevator is no one else dares to take it.

But as he reached more people and experienced more things through dragon boat, smartphone, YouTube and other fields, his vision became wider and wider.

For example, through his Facebook page, he accidentally got a group of "flour" who were very supportive of him. Some fans who moved to the UK knew that he liked the football team Chelus, and specially sent him a plaque of Chelus; some even sent him a plaque. Take him as a close friend and ask him to meet and chat when he encounters unhappy things. He also met a group of wheelchair friends through the special page. When bread goes out with them, he will use his own strength to bring wheelchair friends together The car pushes into the restaurant with the threshold, and the wheelchair friend will read the menu to the bread and help him to travel with peace of mind. Although the bread can be cleaned by himself, it is always more convenient and quicker to have a friend to help.

It was something he never imagined that he could be so close to different communities. He gradually stopped being afraid of facing other people, and he didn't mind the eyes of others.

From being troubled by emotions to being able to be alone, bread has never "sold miserably" on social platforms. He admitted frankly: "I don't need to say this to seek a sense of identity." Having lived for more than 40 years, he always emphasizes that he is just an ordinary person. People, there will be times when they are in a bad mood: "I don't think I'm that great, I can encourage others... I'm happy, but I'm just pushing hard." It just so happens that his stress relief method is the same as his idol Jiang Tao, and he likes to watch it. YouTube videos of people arguing: "I'll be in my room watching clips of people arguing and fighting in the subway. I think it's funny to watch those women fight!" Whether you are in the visible or invisible world, you can be happy so easy.

British teenagers eat potato chips, French fries, sausages and other processed foods for 10 years without eating fruits and vegetables, eventually leading to permanent blindness Eighty adults still don't know that smoking can lead to blindness. Taiwan kind-hearted police help people who have had a stroke for 26 years and become blind. The recipients gather energy and pray for a miracle recovery. The 9-year-old girl does her homework and complains that she can't see clearly. When the "undercover" pretending to be a disabled person finds out that his subordinates treat the disadvantaged like this...

[This article is reprinted with permission from University Line, an internship publication of the School of Journalism and Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The original text: I have no vision but I have vision - an exclusive interview with Bread, a totally blind person]

Source: hk1

All news articles on 2022-05-12

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