China Braille Library brightening the dark world of the blind

The exterior of the China Braille Library [Photo/VCG]

It's just an ordinary building from the outside, one that could easily be missed in the hustle and bustle of modern Beijing. But for people with sight problems, the China Braille Library, in the Chinese capital, is a very special place. This is the country's largest library with modern amenities for blind and visually impaired people. As well as providing traditional services like book lending and mail, it also gives education on braille, computer training, music lessons and public speaking.

It's Tuesday morning. Members of Beijing's blind community make their way from all over the city to the China Braille Library. With the help of volunteers, the visually impaired visitors manage to find their way to a small cinema. Here, they get together with old friends and enjoy the weekly movie screening.

At 9 o'clock in the morning, the 90-seat cinema is filled. For those who've lost their sight, the Tuesday event has now become part of their weekly routine.

Today's movie is 'Animal World', a 2018 Chinese action thriller hit.

Unlike ordinary cinemas, where everyone is required to be quiet, the "cinema for the blind" rely on additional narration during film projection.

While the movie is on, a narrator sits at a desk next to the audience, holding a microphone and a script. Every time there's a pause in the dialogue, she describes each scene's environment and the set, the actors' facial expressions, and what they're wearing.

Urna is from Inner Mongolia. She has been working in the library as a narrator for more than seven years.

"'Audio-described movies' are tailor-made for people with a visual impairment. In many films, there are scenes without dialogue or sound, just body language, which makes it hard for the blind to fully understand. Through verbal descriptions of the action on the screen, we hope they can really enjoy watching a movie."

Urna acts as a narrator to explain what is happening on screen to visually impaired audience. [Photo: from China Plus]

The library's cinema opened in 2011. It is directed mainly at visually impaired people, but people with normal sight can borrow a pair of blinkers if they also wish to experience the movies with narration. The cinema has screened hundreds of movies to date. All were carefully selected and reproduced by Urna and her colleagues.

"At the beginning of every year, we hand out questionnaires to people who often visit the library to see what kind of movies they like. Then we make a second round selection based on their preferences. We found most of them like the new releases and the classics."

It's not easy to bring a film to life to an audience, who relies on oral descriptions and their own imaginations to fill in the gaps. Urna and her colleagues have to do a great deal of work before each screening.

"We spend two weeks to prepare for the screening, from selecting a movie, writing the script and revising the draft to the final release. Usually, we watch the same movie a dozen times… Preparations for historical movies are more time-consuming, because they are based on real stories and there are more characters. If you make a mistake, the audiences immediately pointit out. So we need to do a lot of research for the background information and spend more time collecting data."

Urna says the more she has contact with visually impaired people, the better she understands the community. She has been touched many times by the audience's reaction to her work.

"One day, the cinema was playing 'Under the Hawthorn Tree'. When I finished my narration, the final music was petering out and the whole cinema fell into silence. 'Oops', I thought. 'No reaction from the audience.' I was so upset. A few minutes later, I heard someone sigh and say 'I'm still impressed by the plot. I don't want to leave.' That really affected me. I realized that what I've been doing is very meaningful. It's worth it. Also, my work is very important to the audience that live in darkness. Their recognition has encouraged us to keep going."

The perseverance and hard work of Urna and her colleagues have paid off. Since its opening, the cinema has received thousands of moviegoers from Beijing and other places around China.

Xiao Huanyi is a regular visitor to the cinema. The 61-year-old retired worker is congenitally blind. He has been coming to the screenings every week for almost five years.

"I come any time there is a screening. I like movies grounded in reality, especially thrillers and comedies. Now, watching movies is on the list of things I must do in my life. Otherwise, I feel there's something missing. It has enriched my spare time."

Zhang Hua is another loyal audience. She said "watching" movies has cheered her up since the gloomy days a dozen years ago, when she lost her sight.

"After I became blind, I was pessimistic about life. I couldn't watch TV any more, not to mention movies. I used to ask my family members to describe what was showing on TV, but they got impatient with me, and even laughed at me. Once during a TV program, I heard an animal running. At a guess I said it was a donkey. My husband laughed and told my son: 'Look, it's a dog, but your mom says it's a donkey.' That broke my heart. Then I found out the braille library played movies for visually impaired people. The staff there are very friendly and good at telling stories. So now, even though I'm blind, I can still enjoy films. It helped me get my self-esteem back."

After the "cinema for the blind" initiative was launched, it became an instant hit and the China Braille Library started to set up more across China. Now, people can find them in 155 branches of the library. Some of the movies have been reproduced into DVDs or uploaded to the Internet, which makes it easier for more visually impaired people to access them.