Among the many students who flocked to the college entrance examination this year, four special candidates used their hands to read the test paper.
The students are from the Shanghai School for the Blind and Poor-Sighted.
If everything goes well and the four pass the exam held from July 11, they will be the first visually-handicapped students in the city to enter Shanghai Normal University.
When this reporter met them before the exam, it was evening. But there was no light in the classroom as the students don't need it.
Ren Zhenghao, Cai Jiafei, Li Dong and Zhu Hengyu used their hands to "read" books as they prepared for the big challenge.
The four said they were "extremely happy" for this golden opportunity.
Cai, who had piles of study materials on his desk, said they spent about eight hours daily on study.
Ren, 22, who is the youngest of the four, is the best student in the class. His teacher hopes that the boy will be the first blind student to pass the college entrance exam.
But it is no easy task. There are no reference books in Braille. The school has to buy normal reference books and get them printed in Braille.
Mathematics is another hurdle. They cannot check computations on paper and have to rely on memory.
Ren said geometry is the most difficult for him, because he cannot draw the lines and angles.
However, all the students are confident of passing the exam.
What worries these students is that only Shanghai Normal University is presently open to them - limiting the choice of areas of study. The university provides a small range of subjects including language, history, politics, law and philosophy. But most of these students want to study psychology as it would be easier to find a job in this field after graduation.
"I don't want to be a masseur but I don't harbor ambitions out of range of my ability either," Ren said. "I just hope to be a psychologist in the future."
To be a psychologist is much better than to be a masseur or a piano tuner, which are the most common jobs for blind people, they said.
But psychology courses are out of reach for now.
According to sources in the university, students majoring in psychology must learn mathematical analysis, chart making and some scientific courses which are considered beyond the ability of the blind.
(China Daily July 17, 2002)
