Sight has returned to the once-blind left eye of a 74-year-old woman after she accidentally hit a protruding door latch. Xu Yulian, who lives with her husband in Wuhan, Hubei Province went mysteriously blind in the eye 46 years ago after giving birth to her second son. "I was walking to a pond to wash his diapers and it became dim and then I could see nothing from it," she recalled.

She said she never sought medical help because she is afraid of hospitals. Things went from bad to worse in January 2009 when she went blind in her right eye.

But recently she bumped the left eye into the latch while groping to go outside to dry some damp quilts. "It was painful," she said, "but I thought nothing of it." A week later, though, she noticed that she could see again from the eye and it was confirmed when her husband tested her by holding up three fingers and asking her how many fingers she saw. "Three," she replied.