Disability cannot stop an honest poet

Mother-daughter relationship and an arranged marriage make for profound collections of works, Yang Yang reports.

In the summer of 1992, 16-year-old Yu Xiuhua graduated from junior middle school and was unexpectedly admitted to a local senior middle school. Her parents decided to take her to Beijing to try, for the last time, to treat the cerebral palsy she was born with due to breech presentation and hypoxia during a difficult delivery. The disease impairs her speech and mobility.

Hoping that Yu could go to university if her condition could be treated, they stood for eight hours on the train from Jingmen, Hubei province. After managing to grab seats, they sat for another nine hours before reaching the capital. However, four top hospitals in Beijing said that Yu's condition was untreatable.