'Silence Choir' gives voice to deaf children, opens hearts

Editor's note: To mark the International Day of Persons with Disabilities on Dec 3, this story highlights a journey of a choir composed of deaf children who learned how to sing through vibrations and resonance.

Li Bo, a multimedia artist and musician, said he would never forget the sound of a deaf girl's "ah "as — "a lone utterance that flooded my heart completely".

That was in 2013. The girl, Yang Weiwei, has since become a core member of Li Bo's Silence Choir — a group that would never have existed without that one sound, and one composed entirely of deaf children.

In September, the choir took the stage at Beijing's Forbidden City Concert Hall. As the performance began, the music rose — soft and ethereal — as if carried from the distant mountains where the members had once trained. Then, a single stone fell into the musical waters: the first "ah" of a lone voice. One by one, others joined — a continuous drip, a trickle, a stream, and then a gushing current.

"True equality originates from the resonance of the heart," Li said.

Yet it was a long journey — both literal and metaphorical — for Li and his fellow musician Zhang Yong, co-founders of the choir, to come to see the deaf singers as truly equal.

"We took a plane, a train, two buses, and finally a motorcycle ride to reach the school, where I first met the girl," recalled Zhang, who is based in Beijing.

Under the clouds

Nestled deep in the mountains of Lingyun county in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, the school was built specifically for local children with various disabilities.

Lingyun means "above the clouds", yet the children's hopes rarely soared that high. Behind the gates of Lingyun School the children lived in a world of their own — moving in rhythms of their own making, some of them hesitant and intimidated by the world beyond, "where people can actually hear", as Li observed.

Therefore, none of the children could understand it when Li and Zhang — "two intruders" to use their own words — told them that they were there for their voices.

"As a contemporary artist, I work with various 'materials', including sound," Li explained. "Once, while walking down the street, I heard a deaf man who had just realized he'd lost something precious. He let out a single cry — so raw and powerful that it seemed to contain every emotion he felt in that moment."

"In that moment, I knew I wanted to include the voices of the deaf in my next art and music project," said Li, whose search — aided by a volunteer organization — eventually led him and his friend to the school.

"There we were, with all our recording equipment set up, yet the children refused to cooperate. They walked past us, avoided eye contact, and when asked to make a sound, simply raised their little fingers — a gesture that meant 'no good'."

Realizing they first needed to connect with the children, Li and Zhang stayed for a week, spending entire days simply playing with them. "Somewhere along the way, we began to see how wrong we had been — forcing these deeply sensitive children to face the stark reality of their disabilities in the name of art. It was time to step back."

And then came the day when Li and Zhang decided to bid farewell to the school's headmaster. As they stood outside his office, a young girl, no more than 6 or 7, suddenly ran up to them. She took Zhang's hands in hers and let out a clear, heartfelt "ah", gazing intently into their eyes.

"She was effectively saying, 'Look, I can do it! I can do it!'" said Zhang. "We looked at each other and realized that this little girl trusted us enough to believe what we had told the children repeatedly: that their voices were truly beautiful. Trust demands commitment. Once it is built, you cannot simply walk away — you must honor it."