Managing despite difficulties

Li Zhen, 55, Braille editor at the China Braille Press

I've believed that my marriage was predestined. I am blind and my husband is paralyzed from the waist down. Moreover, he is taciturn. If we had met on a blind date, we probably wouldn't have met a second time.

He got to know me through a radio program. I was among a small number of visually impaired people who made it to college in the late 1980s. As a result, I was invited onto a local radio program to talk about the experience.

At the time, my husband had just been paralyzed in an accident and he was in a wheelchair. He happened to listened to the program. A friend of his suggested that they could do something for me.

At the time there weren't many Braille books for visually impaired people, so they contacted me and offered to read newspapers and magazines for me and record the stories on tape.

I regularly gave them tapes and they read and recorded everything from news reports to modern literature. Gradually we became friends.

We married in 1996. I wanted a partner with common interests and similar views on life, values and the world. We are largely independent as a couple. He is my eyes and I am his legs. We even managed to furnish our new home on our own. And we regularly go on trips. Though we have more difficulties than able-bodied people, we manage.

We don't have children. My husband was in his 40s when we married, and we both think a couple like us would have great problems raising children. Also, our conditions would put huge pressure on the kids when they grew up.

Li Zhen spoke with Li Lei.