An eye for business

The room was dark. As Liu Siyao waved her finger in front of her right eye, her pupil instantly lit up with a beam of blue light.

The effect, akin to something from a sci-fi movie, appears in a video made by Liu, which quickly gained popularity after she posted it online. The 27-year-old ocularist made the cyberpunk accessory herself by implanting a small chip into her own prosthetic eye and holding a magnetic switch in her hand.

Liu, who goes by the handle Xintong on social media, has been busy since her ocular prosthesis studio opened last year in Beijing, with constant orders coming in from people across the country with monocular visual impairment.

She aims to make ocular prostheses that look as natural as possible, are comfortable to wear and able to bring confidence to the lives of people in China with monocular issues.

Liu's dream was to be a dancer, and she began learning at 8 years old. However, she lost her right eye in a car accident in 2013, which shattered her dream of commanding the stage and reveling in applause.

She implanted an ocular prosthesis to replace her right eyeball, which was removed in a surgery after the accident, but the artificial eye was neither comfortable nor looked natural.

She also had to make adjustments to the way she lived her life, particularly having to walk slowly and carefully, one step at a time, as following the accident and subsequent surgery, she would often stumble on stairs and trip while walking in the street.

It took time to adapt to her impaired spatial awareness and depth perception — she had to turn her head a full 180 degrees when crossing a road and she often found herself banging into things while dancing.

The first three months after the accident were the worst, a period she describes as her darkest time, during which she was irritable and sensitive.

"For a long time, I couldn't face the reality that I now have only one eye, and I was afraid of looking at myself in the mirror and seeing the wound," she recalls.