Knitting teacher casts off gloom

Skills training helps put disabled people on the road to higher living standards

Li Ronghua used to stay indoors all day because she uses a wheelchair, and she was worried that people would stare at her.

The 38-year-old, from the southwestern province of Sichuan, said she has very high self-esteem, so she refused to be the subject of curiosity or pity. That self-esteem proved useful, though, because it drove her to overcome difficulties and start a career in knitting.

She earns about 2,000 yuan ($315) a month thanks to the skills she learned at a knitting training center in Hongshan, Langzhong city, Sichuan. Although the center was 8 kilometers from Li's home, she insisted on traveling there every day to gain new skills.

It was established by the city's disabled persons' federation in 2018 to train disabled people, especially those on low incomes. The center also helps to sell their goods, both online and offline.

After mastering many skills at the center, Li started working for a handicraft company run by local disabled people. It distributes knitting materials to more than 100 disabled people, who work at home, and then sells their products online.

Li now teaches knitting skills via the company's live broadcast platform. "My fans call me 'Teacher Li', which makes me feel a special sense of achievement," she said.

Her life was dismal before she became a teacher. She said her farmer parents were sick of their poverty-stricken lives, so they named her Ronghua－"wealth and prosperity"－to express their wish for a better lifestyle.

"However, fate played a big joke on them. I did not bring them wealth－instead, I ended up sitting in a wheelchair in my 30s," Li said.

After graduating from middle school, she went to Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, to work odd jobs like other girls from her hometown.

During that time, she felt that something was wrong with the muscles in her legs, which gradually became atrophied. She was diagnosed with meningocele, a condition that affects the spine, and other ailments that caused problems in her legs. "The doctor told me that a bulge in my spinal cord had compressed a nerve, which affected my legs," she said.

In 2004, she had three spinal surgeries but remained paralyzed because she had missed the optimum time for treatment.