On this morning at 8 a.m. Chien Hsiang-chi starts out from Kinmen St. in Taipei, takes the MRT Tanshui line to Yuanshan station, changes to the Red Line #29 bus and arrives at Donghu Elementary School where she meets Wu Mei-you, her case worker. Both then take a bus to Hsichih to tune a client's piano. Such is Chien's daily routine. Each day she tunes two or three pianos and has gone as far as Taichung to do her job.

A barrier-free infrastructure for the handicapped in Taiwan is not yet complete. When visually handicapped tuners go on a call they still need the Parents' Association for the Visually Impaired to send a case worker to accompany them.

A map in her mind

Chien's family home is in Nantou but because of her work she has settled in Taipei. Now 29 years old, Chien rents an apartment by herself and lives an independent life. Although she is blind she can get around anywhere. Wu Mei-you says Chien's head is full of "numbers." You just have to set up an appointment for tuning and she immediately starts putting together the "map" in her mind. The MRT lines and bus routes she knows like the back of her hand, and she always is able to make the appointment on time. "But you never know with the buses, you can never be sure!" says Chien. She cannot see the bus number, but if she is lucky and meets a person traveling the same line, she can travel with them and not be late for her appointment. If, however, there is bad weather, the buses are full and just drive by without stopping, or if there is no one to ask at the bus stop, she just has to sit and wait. Once she had to wait for four buses before she was able to get on one.

Once inside the client's home, Chien determines the type of piano, finds out whether or not the dehumidifier is working normally and then moves the soundboard and the piano top out of the way. She pulls out a tuning fork from her tool case (which weighs five kilos) and tries a few notes on the keyboard to test for any strings out of tune. With darkness in front of her, she concentrates all her attention on listening. Although her actions are slow, they are extremely coordinated. Were it not for her tightly closed eyes that betray her uniqueness, Chien Hsiang-chi's practice of her profession and her skills would be indistinguishable from that of a sighted piano tuner.

Before proceeding to tune the piano, Chien Hsiang-chi first moves the heavy top, which can weigh as much as 20 kilos, and sets up the soundboard, which is taller than she is. The sight of her clenched jaw, her meticulous care and her determination makes your heart ache for her but at the same elicits great admiration.

Windows

Chien Hsiang-chi has been blind since birth and as a young child she had not the vaguest idea what it meant not to be able to "see." When she was in first grade she sat in the front row of the class while the teacher led the class in reciting "bo po mo fo"-the names of the Mandarin Phonetic Symbols. From the blackboard Chien could hear the sound of the chalk as the teacher wrote. "But I didn't know what "game" they were playing because I couldn't see anything." She had been assuming all along that the world was one of darkness, that darkness was normal. Only when she had this experience did she suddenly realize she was different from others-she could not see, she was cut off from the world.

Chien began to study piano at the age of eight. Because she could not wander about freely, every time the tuner came to her home, Chien would always sit on the side, carefully listening and, filled with curiosity, use her little trembling hands to caress the "inner beauty" of the piano.

"Tuning the piano was really very noisy but I had no place to hide and just had to sit there listening to the whole process," says Chien with a laugh. But because of this she was more sensitive than the average piano student as she listened to the work of each piano tuner, and she developed an accurate understanding of the construction of a piano. An acute sense of hearing and delicate sense of touch became her "windows to the soul" of the piano.

The study of the piano followed her through childhood and teenage years and her entrance into the music department of Chinese Culture University. But she became increasingly dissatisfied with her piano playing as each piano tuner had a different degree of accuracy of tuning, which sounded annoying and uncomfortable to her ears. "Some day I will tune my own piano!" she thought.

A barrier-free infrastructure for the handicapped in Taiwan is not yet complete. When visually handicapped tuners go on a call they still need the Parents' Association for the Visually Impaired to send a case worker to accompany them.

Listening with the "heart"

In 2004 the Taipei Parents' Association for the Visually Impaired set up a piano tuning class for visually handicapped people. Chien Hsiang-chi never thought she could make a living out of piano tuning, she just thought she would learn this skill to guarantee her own piano would always have a nice, clear tone that was just right. And so she moved north, far from Nantou, and began to live on her own and study piano tuning.

The first step in tuning a piano is to move the 20-kilo soundboard (even heavier for imported pianos with their original soundboards). For Chien, not only was this a question of weight, "I was afraid of crushing my foot!" she says. She then feels out the internal structure of the piano, gets out 20 or 30 items from her "treasure chest," which include a tuning fork, adjustable tuning bar, damper felt pads, tuning wrench, strike hammers, rubber wedges.... She has to find the right tool and get it in the right position, and use her keen sense of hearing and an accurate and precise amount of force before she is able to adjust the hundreds of components and correct the notes that are out of tune.

Chien is especially fond of the soft feel of the felt hammers. But with one end connected to the keyboard, the other end striking the piano wire to set it vibrating, the hammer is the key to determining the tuning and quality of the sound. Just getting one note wrong can ruin the whole job.

When she first started, Chien would misadjust a tuning pin or set the hammer angle wrong because she could not see. She would then have to spend hours, several times that of the average person, to get things right just by feel. And once her fingers were cut badly by the soundboard catches. To keep up her progress, Chien regularly practiced in the association's tuning classroom, working hard to commit to memory the "feel" of the best tunings she had done and storing them in the back of her mind. Each practice session would last five or six hours. To overcome tuning errors, she recorded her tunings and listened to them over and over again to pick out the mistakes. She also listened to tunings done by fellow tuners, comparing them and integrating them with her own. After 720 hours of practice, her success rate reached 96%, and before long she got her state license and became a bone fide piano tuner.

Currently there are some 50,000 visually handicapped people in Taiwan. Their eyes may be blind, but not their hearts. They need more varied career opportunities and training so that they can realize their self-potential and contribute their expertise to society.

Yoga

Not being able to see made her realize the importance of hearing, so Chien Hsiang-chi conscientiously "nurtured" her ears. She did not go to noisy places, did not live next to a major road, did not talk loud on the cell phone. Even when she traveled and people sang karaoke she would put in earplugs to protect her hearing. "My ears became very sensitive and would not let even the smallest sound escape."

But for Chien, another obstacle to tuning work was the physical effort it required. She says she never was fond of exercise and had very little stamina. Yet tuning meant long periods of standing. Just moving the soundboard and the piano top alone was very strenuous for a girl who was only 150 centimeters tall like her. And this is not even to mention standing for over an hour making minute adjustments to 88 keys, 88 hammers and steel strings. Especially for a person who had just graduated and with no experience, this could take five or six hours at one go. In short order it meant body aches and pains. At the suggestion of her mother, Chien began to practice yoga, spending an hour a day in physical exercise. Her muscles became relaxed and supple, not only benefiting her work, but significantly strengthening her body.

Before proceeding to tune the piano, Chien Hsiang-chi first moves the heavy top, which can weigh as much as 20 kilos, and sets up the soundboard, which is taller than she is. The sight of her clenched jaw, her meticulous care and her determination makes your heart ache for her but at the same elicits great admiration.

Controlling fate

In the more than two years since becoming a certified tuner, Chien Hsiang-chi has tuned over 500 pianos. Nothing pleases her more that a client's confidence in her professional competence. Some clients have her stay to chat and have something to eat, and there is a feeling between them like that between old friends. Once the association was shorthanded and unable to send a volunteer to accompany her, but the client enthusiastically went to the station to meet her, which impressed Chien very much. Once she also went as far as Miaoli to meet a foreign client. He thought the tuning done by this blind tuner was particularly outstanding and amid much talk and encouragement, invited her to lunch and followed by a few impromptu songs on the piano. It was a wonderfully relaxed and friendly atmosphere and made Chien feel just great.

Sometimes, tuning can be interesting. Chien Hsiang-chi has found ball-point pen refills, little pieces of wood, money, watches, paper clips, photographs, even diamond rings. Once, in a room that was being decorated, the end of an electric wire less than two centimeters long had fallen into the piano. Chien worked on the tuning for quite a while, but still the noise made by the wire persisted. After turning the piano inside out and searching for two hours, the culprit was finally discovered. "I had to stand for two whole hours-was I tired!"

Chien Hsiang-chi says although she is blind, she feels working hard and providing for herself is a simple matter of course. In school Chien had felt the pressure of competition and so has always made demands of herself equal to those of the average person. "People like me cannot see, but we are still part of this world!" says Chien, giving encouragement to herself and to all visually handicapped people.