Acclaimed Chinese film on blind masseurs set for release soon

Chinese cities and towns are dotted with massage parlors, many of which are managed entirely by blind people. Of the estimated 17 million visually impaired Chinese, hundreds of thousands are said to serve as blind masseurs across the country, not just in parlors but medical facilities as well.

Tui Na (Massage), a Chinese film that has sought to capture the lesser known world of the blind, and which won a Silver Bear at the Berlin international film festival earlier this year, is scheduled to hit screens in China later this month.

The film, completed this year, was adapted from Bi Feiyu's novel by the same name, and tells the stories of happiness, sorrow, love and longing among a handful of blind workers at a small massage parlor in Nanjing, capital city of eastern China's Jiangsu province, where Bi lives. The novel is universal in the sense that the massage parlor could be anywhere in the country.