Yeung Siu-fong with coach and mentor Cheung Woon-man. Fu Lei / China Daily

In many ways Cherie Yeung Siu-fong, a 21-year-old champion swimmer without arms, defines character, composure and resilience. Fu Lei reports.

Cherie Yeung Siu-fong receives swimming training twice a week. Before boarding an MTR train from school to the sports center, she waves over the reader at the subway entrance her empty sleeve, inside which a jacketed Octopus card is pinned.

It is not until she needs to put on her swimsuit and swimming goggles does she turn to her younger sister for assistance.

"The rubber band of the goggles is very tight. I can't fix it with my feet," said Yeung.

She has no arms. Sounds amazing? Here's more.

Souvenirs of success. Fu Lei / China Daily

Last year in a friendly event featuring Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Taipei and host Macao, Yeung won a gold, a silver and four bronze medals in nine races.

"You swim like a fish," one of her friends commented on her Facebook Page.

The friend is right.

Yeung presses with every fibre of her body, combines her resolute soul, grim determination and a firm will to win against adversities.

"Now she can finish 100-meter breaststroke in 2 minutes and 29 seconds. That's her record last year. It would be ideal if she can reduce it to 2 minutes and 23 seconds," says her coach and mentor, Joseph Cheung Woon-man, who expects Yeung to do better in the upcoming quadrennial summit event in Asia.

Yeung has been called up to the Hong Kong squad for the Asian Para Games billed for December in Guangzhou. She will take part in 100m breaststroke, 100m backstroke and 50m butterfly.

"That's going to be a big event. Competing with swimmers from so many countries will be a huge experience," muses Yeung, who had her both arms amputated at the shoulder after suffering a near-fatal high-voltage accident in her hometown on the mainland.

Yeung, only nine years old then, was playing with friends on the rooftop of her house in Huiyang, Guangdong province.

The course of her life has changed for ever since that day in 1998.

"I don't remember how it happened. Before I could realize anything, I found myself on a hospital bed surrounded by doctors and nurses."

It was devastating. "But the doctors would try to cheer me up ...," she recalls those early days of undiluted trauma and pain.

Gangrene set in and amputation was the only option. The doctors, however, said some parts of her arms could be salvaged. They were wrong.

With each of a series of surgeries she underwent, Yeung's hands got only shorter and shorter.

"My father looked absolutely shattered the day he saw my hands fully gone. For him, it was an eerily frightening sight," she recounts.

Yeung in front of the shanty in Cha Kwo Ling where she lives with her family. Fu Lei / China Daily

It was the beginning of Yeung's grim battle against destiny and society.

Some children in the neighborhood would jeer at her; at family gatherings she'd find herself somewhat ignored and unwanted.

"Initially, even my younger sister would feel strange and look scared. Now she is my constant companion," Yeung, a Hakka Chinese by origin, recalls those days when she discovered how physical shapes influence human souls and sensibilities. Even schools wouldn't admit her because of her physical deformity.

"Let it be. I have grown immune to all this. I stay at home and watch TV. I don't feel bad any more," she says. She's got her own domain to tread on.

Swimming without arms is like birds flying without wings. But Yeung has worked the magic through perseverance, practice and improvizations.

She uses her waist to make up for her lost arms, "especially for the butterfly stroke," a style which is chiefly propelled by simultaneous movement of arms.

And now she is making a splash, a cynosure of all eyes.

In the reverse swing of fate and fortune, Yeung has emerged as someone adored and wanted to be seen and spoken to. Even some strangers on the street greet and applaud her.

The metamorphosis from a liability to a "leader" is a celebration of an epic struggle.

The outdoor swimming pool where Yeung receives training is choc a bloc with physically handicapped players.

The two-hour slot is exclusive for a sports club for the disabled. Wheelchairs are aligned along one side of the pool.

"I train so many disabled players here, but Siu-fong's physical disability is most challenging," said Cheung, 73, who has been coaching Yeung over the past three years.

Quite a feat: Eating with a foot. Fu Lei / China Daily

Ironically, Yeung didn't even try to swim before the accident.

Not until late 2007 did Yeung make her debut in the swimming pool. Before that, she was just a girl "very scared of water."

Yeung says she is most comfortable at breaststrokes. She tried freestyle, too, but found it hard to balance her body when moving forward.

Earlier, she had taken part in the 7th Chinese National Games for the Disabled in 2007 in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province.

It was in that event that Yeung, a runner then, discovered an urge to swim. The amphibious talent soon made Yeung a formidable contender in triathlon.

Before she immigrated to Hong Kong in 2003 to reunite with her father, a construction worker in the city for more than 30 years, Yeung spent over four years in virtual isolation.

Yeung's younger sister, Lily, who has been with Yeung throughout, believes Hong Kong has made a significant change in her life.

"After we came to Hong Kong, she started looking happier and speaking to us all more often than before," says Lily.

"I adapted to the new place and the new environment fast," Yeung corroborates. "Hong Kong is a place where I feel more at home. It is a caring city. Help came before we asked for any."

Hong Kong has seven schools for the physically handicapped, among over 60 schools for various disabilities.

Princess Alexandra School, which Yeung has attended for seven years, is one of a few special schools that offer courses alike a normal secondary school.

The swimmer in Yeung was not unearthed by chance. She was picked by a coach who specially nosed around special schools to spot talents.

Yeung at the entrance of the Harbour Road Sports Centre swimming pool. Fu Lei / China Daily

In an exhibition visit organized by her school, she acquainted herself with her painting mentor who infused in her an interest in fine art. She, in fact, dreamt to be a designer and make customized products for the disabled.

Being the eldest sibling of her family of five, she does her best to make things better for her family that lives in a squatter settlement in Cha Kwo Ling. This is a place where Hakka Chinese have been living since the time when the British declared Hong Kong as its colony.

Yeung's family lives in one-storey shanty with a low ceiling and walls cluttered with wires and adapters. Even her neighbor's washing machine spun from the other side of the wooden wall causes mild tremor.

"The roof doesn't leak alright but I get worried everytime there's a gale blowing. The area, located in the highest point in the vicinity, faces the harbor,"Yeung tells her "home truths."

The huts nearby are exposed to fire risks. A massive fire in 2006 ejected a number of her neighbors.

Yeung usually would do her homework in the living room, with the ghosting television on. She would sit in the couch and put her exercise book down on the ground.

Although her feet are flexible enough to write, eat and pick up phone, Yeung couldn't quite overcome every difficulty she encountered. She couldn't bathe without assistance. If it rained and Yeung did not find a shelter, she had to get drenched.

But Yeung is made of sterner stuff. Adversities have always ignited a fire of determination to overcome. And she has overcome.

"I know there are hurdles, problems, but I keep trying to find solutions," she says.

(HK Edition 10/19/2010 page4)