This photo taken with a mobile phone shows Hu Shaojie (R) talking with neighbors in the Hujiagelao Village of Yulin City, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, May 25, 2023. (Xinhua/Sun Zhenghao)
XI'AN, June 20 (Xinhua) -- Born with cerebral palsy and confined to his bed, Hu Shaojie never attended school. Yet in the world of his own poetry, he could stroll freely on the hills, singing and drinking in the evening breeze.
"Cerebral palsy has deprived the freedom of my body, but I still enjoy spiritual freedom," said the 25-year-old in the Hujiagelao Village of Yulin City in northwest China's Shaanxi Province.
Using his toes to type on the keyboard, Hu has completed nearly 1,000 poems since he took up writing in December 2018. One of them describes the writer like this:
Lying in the depths of mountains like an ailing tiger,
Along with poems high flies my dream.
In others' eyes I am disabled and haggard,
Taking a draught of wine I feel happy and free.
As a premature child, he experienced severe cerebral palsy, resulting in limited mobility with only one functional leg. He needed help from others to eat or go to the toilet. What was worse, the disease can be life-threatening.
"At some points I cannot breathe," said the man. "It feels like someone is beating your 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 kind of earth shelter dwelling typical to the landlocked northwestern China provinces. In his early years, he had few chances to go outside. In his own words, bathing in the sunshine was "a luxury."
He spent most of the 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 looked at the old calendar, newspapers and beverage bottles, asking his grandpa what were written on them, and this would become the basis for how he would learn Chinese characters.
Another teacher of the teenage Hu was television, from which he learned how to make paper airplanes, and a makeshift compass using a magnet and a broken watch. He also fell in love with history and traditional poetry.
In 2018, at the suggestion of some friends, he got 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 who helped me to know my inner self, to know what I am living for."
In his 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," said the man.
In August 2020, Hu bought an electric wheelchair, with which he could finally travel freely outside his home. His poems became more diverse as they begin to depict his journeys on the countryside roads, the flowers and butterflies in early spring, the crop field, the drought, the rain, and the harvest.
This photo taken with a mobile phone shows a view of the Hujiagelao Village of Yulin City, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, May 25, 2023. (Xinhua/Sun Zhenghao)
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 am disabled, but she said she would still like to be with me," he said.
However, everything ended in December 2021, when Hu received a photo of the girl's death certificate on the phone. She died of a fatal illness. He wrote several poems to mourn for her.
"My poems are the voices of my soul," he said. His sorrow of seeing his grandparents getting old, and his happiness after playing with his niece were all recorded in his verses.
Gradually his poems were read by more and more people.
"Although Hu was physically trapped in a wheelchair, he defied all difficulties in the poems. The contrast of his body and spirit gave his poems unique luster," said Wang Li, a member of the writers association of the Yuyang District in Yulin City.
"He has a pure heart that is capable of drawing people closer to him. He pursues light, and he himself is light for many others," said 21-year-old Jiang Xingyu, a student with the Xi'an International Studies University who is now a friend of Hu.
She has similar taste with Hu, and became an editor of Hu's personal poetry account. The pair are also planning for 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," said Jiang.
Currently dozens of volunteers from local governments, federations of disabled persons and Hu's fans from other parts of China have joined efforts to realize Hu's dream.
Hu believed that 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 there, someone could find my poems in a dusty corner, and know that there used to be such a person who lived, laughed and loved." ■
