Disabled and unable to walk, villager finds his life's purpose through poetry

XI'AN — Born with cerebral palsy and confined to his bed, Hu Shaojie has never attended school. Yet in the world of his own poetry, he can stroll freely on the hills, singing and drinking in the evening breeze.

"Cerebral palsy has deprived me of the freedom to move my body as I would like, but I still enjoy spiritual freedom," said the 25-year-old from Hujiagelao village in Yulin city, Shaanxi province.

Using his toes to type on his keyboard, Hu has written nearly 1,000 poems since he took up writing in December 2018. One of them describes him like this:

Lying in the depths of mountains like an ailing tiger,

Along with poems, my dreams fly high.

In others' eyes, I am disabled and haggard,

Taking a draught of wine, I feel happy and free.

As a premature child, Hu experienced severe cerebral palsy, resulting in limited mobility with only one functional leg. He needed help from others to eat or use the toilet.

Even worse, the disease can be life-threatening.

"Sometimes, I cannot breathe," he said. "It feels like someone is beating my chest with a giant hammer. In the worst case, my heart even stopped."

Hu's father worked outside their hometown, and he lived with his grandparents in a cave house, a dwelling typical in landlocked northwestern Chinese provinces. In his early years, he had few chances to go outside. In his own words, enjoying the sunshine was "a luxury."

Hu spent most of his time lying alone in bed, gazing at the familiar trees and mountains out of the window day after day.

When he was bored, he would fiddle with whatever was within reach. He also often looked at old calendars, newspapers and beverage bottles, asking his grandfather about what was written on them. This was how he learned to understand Chinese characters.

Hu also learned from watching TV, which taught him how to make paper airplanes and a makeshift compass using a magnet and a broken watch.

It was around this time that he fell in love with history and traditional poetry.

In 2018, at the suggestion of some friends, he enrolled in online courses to study poetry.

"Writing poems soon became an outlet for me," he recalled. "At times, I could write more than 10 poems a day. Poetry is like a friend that helped me discover my inner self, to understand what I am living for."

In Hu's first poem, he compared himself to a pine tree:

Cold wind blows at night,

Pine tree bathed in moonlight.

When thousands of others wither,

She smiles in the frigid winter.

"Poems gave me a pair of wings, with which my soul, once chained within my sick body, suddenly took off to travel freely across the world," he said.

In August 2020, Hu bought an electric wheelchair, with which he could finally travel freely outside his home. His poems became more diverse, depicting his journeys on the countryside roads, the flowers and butterflies in early spring, the crop fields, the drought, the rain and the harvest.

Poems also brought him friends and an ill-fated relationship.

Hu met a girl online who also loved poems, and they shared their works with each other. "She knew that I was disabled, but she said she would still like to be with me," he said.

However, that relationship ended in December 2021, when he received a photo of the girl's death certificate on the phone. She had died of a fatal illness.

He wrote several poems mourning her death.

"My poems are the voices of my soul," he said. The sorrow he felt seeing his grandparents age, as well as the joy from playing with his niece were all recorded in his verses.

Gradually, an increasing number of people began reading his poems.

"Although Hu is physically trapped in a wheelchair, he has defied all difficulties in his poems. The contrast of his body and spirit gives his poems unique luster," said Wang Li, a member of the writers association of Yuyang district in Yulin.

Jiang Xingyu, a 21-year-old student at Xi'an International Studies University, has befriended Hu.

"He has a pure heart that is capable of drawing people closer to him," she said. "He pursues light, and he himself is a light for many others."

Jiang is now the editor of Hu's personal poetry account. The two are also planning a poetry collection, which is now Hu's biggest wish.

"His physical condition is getting worse, and he is afraid that he will one day lose the ability to write," Jiang said.

Currently, dozens of volunteers from local governments, groups focused on serving the disabled and fans from other parts of China have joined efforts to help Hu realize his dream.

Hu believes his disease might one day take his life.

"I would be happy if I could leave some traces in this world, so that … many years later, when I am no longer here, someone can find my poems in a dusty corner and know that there used to be such a person who lived, laughed and loved."

Xinhua