I am the only disabled teacher on campus

Zheng Danyi, 26, a visually impaired piano teacher at Jiangxi Zhongshan Dance School in Nanchang, Jiangxi province

When I was born in 1992 in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, I could see very little. Therefore, I never attended mainstream schools like other girls. Instead, I was enrolled at a local blind school in 1999.

In such schools, the students are usually raised with the understanding that they are bound to become masseurs as adults. As a result, the teachers did not press us to study academic subjects like in mainstream schools. When I reached 15, I began to learn massage, and three years later I began to intern at a street massage parlor.