Greed and selfishness

Are gobbling up the lifeblood of the world.

Nature's anger

Takes its payback in innocent flesh.

I ask him:

Why don't people cherish the earth's treasures?

Dark-expressioned, he replies:

My eyes are sightless, but their hearts are blind.

From "Sightless Eyes, Seeing Heart" by Wang Chu-hsuen

The difficulties faced by the visually impaired in their everyday lives are difficult for most of us to imagine. When they go out, the streets are like a tiger's maw. Even in their own homes, tasks as simple as cooking meals and cleaning up the house are major challenges for a blind couple.

Hsu Yung-chang and his wife are both visually impaired. They have two children, one of whom is two-and-a-half years old, the other, one year old. Because both parents are sightless, the children are often crashing into things and falling down. But Hsu Yung-chang says, "Banging into things is no big deal. What really worries us is the problem of their education." He says that though his wife spends all her time at home taking care of the children, there is no way she can teach them to read and write. And she is completely unable to supervise their homework.

Chen Ching-chun gave up her teaching job to devote herself to the care of her kids, becoming a full-time mom. Even so, she still has difficulty taking care of things around the house. There are some things she just can't do, so her fourth-grade son must do a portion of the housework.

Outside the house, the visually impaired need other people's help still more often. "It's a huge help when someone asks me if they can lend me a hand," says Hsu. But he says with some sadness, "Sometimes I go up to ask someone something, and the person I approach won't say anything. Some even back away."

Of course, sightless people sometimes get themselves into funny situations, too. For example: While shopping for clothes in a department store, a blind person runs his hands over a mannequin for ages before realizing that it's a living person; or, ducks down to climb into a taxi before those already in the taxi have had a chance to get out. When they tell each other such jokes, the blind don't really know whether to laugh or cry.

Don't just think of me as sightless

Although the windows of their souls may have been closed, blind people do learn how to do a number of things most sighted people cannot. Walking in a fixed direction is one such skill.

Those who have tried walking or running with their eyes covered usually remember the insecurity and fear they felt at being unable to see where they were and where they were going. Some bump into things and fall down. Others hardly dare to take a step.

Being able to walk in a fixed direction is an essential skill for the visually impaired. After they have learned to do it, they can go wherever they want without having to rely on someone to lead them.

Walking in a fixed direction is more complicated than it sounds. First you must fix your position. To do so, visually impaired persons must use all of their non-visual senses to read clues to fix their position relative to their surroundings. The scent of a bakery, a laundromat, a restaurant or flower store, or the sound of a record shop all may serve as clues to help them recognize their environment. When crossing streets, they rely on the intensity of the sound of traffic to judge whether a light is red or green.

Teng Pei-wen has made a number of visually impaired friends through the film script she is writing. In spending time with them, she has noted a number of interesting things: "When blind people pour a glass of water, they don't overfill it. They know when to stop because they can hear the difference in the sound when the glass is full." "Don't think that just because a blind person can't see, you can slip away without their knowing. They can tell when people are coming in and out from the movement of the air."

In some countries, the visually impaired can even "see" paintings. Some people make a three dimensional rendering of the painting to let them see it. Still others make the different colors radiate different temperatures. By touching such a rendering, a visually impaired person can feel the design and even the color of a painting.

Seeing with your heart

In addition to having exceptionally sharp non-visual senses, the blind learn to see with their hearts.

Legislator Cheng Lung-shui's mottoes are: "Why was I born into this world? To see the mountains, the waters and everything under heaven"; and, "Watch me." When asked, "How does one see everything under heaven with sightless eyes," he laughs heartily before answering seriously: "With your heart."

Sometimes, scenery viewed with your heart is even more beautiful that that viewed with your eyes. Once, after reading a poem describing the Tanshui river, the blind child-poet Wang Peng exclaimed to her mother: "Mom, it's beautiful!" Hearing her daughter say this, Mama Wang quickly found a copy of the poem for herself. But after poring over it for ages, she just couldn't find the beauty her daughter had mentioned.

Huang Kuo-yan, who lost his eyesight to Terry's Syndrome while in middle school, also has strong feelings about this kind of vision. Huang says that most people are extremely dependent upon their eyesight. They don't realize that eyesight sometimes gets in the way. He feels that he himself didn't really see the world until after he lost his sight. He describes the feeling in his essay "I Really See It!": "When you lose your eyesight, you lose the ability to distinguish between objects. . . . Now my eyes can no longer see a person's beauty or ugliness, and my heart only sees kindness or malevolence. Seeing with your heart, you're directly encountering the deepest part of their humanity!"

p.122

Reading with their hands and seeing with their hearts. Though the "windows of their souls" may have been shut, the visually impaired can nonetheless appreciate the beauty of art.