In Disability Centers

He was in his teenage years when he first heard of a place called Shenzhen. Returnees from the South carried cash and stories. They boasted of the beach and ocean, of city lights and asphalt roads, thick bills dangling from their sweaty palms. “They bragged and boasted on and on about the sea: how big and beautiful and blue it is. And about the work they secured, which paid them more in a month than one could possibly earn in a year in the nearby town. And there’s so much more. Roads full of cars. Skyscrapers, still in construction, reaching toward the clouds. The scenes were unbelievable back then.” For Uncle Liu, the exotic prospect of modernity was unimagined and unimaginable. And it soon proved intoxicating.

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Catching snippets of the returnee’s narratives, Uncle Liu began to carve out Shenzhen’s cityscape in his imagination. “There’s the Guomao building, propping up a huge disk-like ceramic plate at the very top. I thought it was there to collect rainwater from heaven. Then there’s Mt. Huaguo (known as Mt. Lianhua today), like a big, green pyramid…Now that I’m used to Shenzhen, they don’t seem anywhere close to being impressive. But back then it was eye-opening, and it attracted me so intensely.”

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Not only was the cityscape attractive; Shenzhen presented equally alluring economic opportunities. “I wished I could’ve been among the returnees I saw, wearing new leather shoes and mechanical watches, holding stacks of cash in hand. I yearned for a chance to work in Shenzhen. Back then, all I wanted was to earn enough to build a solid brick home back in the village, so I can house my parents, marry a wife, and raise children. A big house was all you need for a successful rustic life; it’s a symbol of wealth and stability that attracts girls and their parents alike, and parental approval was perhaps the single most important thing for a marriage,” he recounted. “So when the next wave of returnees departed for Shenzhen again, I packed my stuff in a large plastic bag and followed. I thought I’d return in a harvest season or two.” But the triumphant return trips never came. Year after year, he harvested wages in place of rice, his savings dissipating into the cost of survival.

​Aunt Li sat exposed, without a barrier window. Once, her desk staged a chilling incident: “last winter, there was this tall, large psychotic visitor. He rushed into the building and started throwing punches at my co-worker, pushing her to the ground. Nobody knew what to do. All the social workers on the ground floor were female that day. I had to hide myself and call the police in secret. Actually, I’ve been pleading for security guards to be stationed inside the hall on the ground floor, but resources are limited. They [the government] can hardly afford professional guards at the front gate, let alone additional guards inside. You saw the old guards at retirement age at the front gate too, didn’t you? Do you expect them capable of fighting off a psychotic man in his twenties? And what if he had a knife?” Aunt Li slowed and quieted her voice as she went on. The center’s one security station was a small cubicle tucked by its parking lot gate, and the guards’ primary task was to charge parking fees.

Like the guards, Aunt Li’s job is deceptively simple: verify certificates, assign a number, then guide them to a room. Aunt Li told me that as they appear, these processes are in fact, not the challenging part: “the difficulty lies in dealing with all sorts of people. Like in the extreme case of a violent psychotic. That was, to be fair, very rare. But every day or two, there’d be an applicant with random emotional outbursts. Sometimes, if you think about it, you can come to understand them a bit. They arrive weary—sometimes dripping with sweat after a scorching walk under Shenzhen’s summer heat, or dripping from unpredictable monsoon showers. (Shenzhen might be cloudy without being rainy for whole entire days, or it might give you a shower on a sunny, cloudless day.) They blame my desk’s height, that the air con isn’t cool enough, but their frustration is really about other hassles.”

Rain, heat, and bad temper were all present on that humid June afternoon, when a man with one prosthetic leg stormed into the hall. “All of a sudden, upon seeing us, he started cursing the distance from his home in Bao’an. ‘Why here? Why did you have to pick here? Why is it so far from where I live?’ he spat. Well, as a matter of fact, our building is pretty close to Futian District’s residential centers, and we’ve been here for over a decade. Our building is here, never moved. And Futian District is, geographically speaking, near the center of Shenzhen. Maybe it’s inconvenient to get here from where that person lived, but it’s not as if we can change location just for him.” This was, of course, not what Aunt Li said on spot. Held back by her professional training and the rule of avoiding conflict escalation, Aunt Li tried to comfort the visitor: “I know it’s far. I’m sorry for that. If you want, I could sit down with you and work out the best way for you to get back afterward.” She always embraced problem-oriented coping: “I’m not a psychologist, and there’s no time for counseling—there’re people waiting in line, and they each have their own difficulties in life. All I can do is to quiet down their anger, and work out efficient solutions to unreasonable demands.”

​When the 2018 trade war rattled her foreign-trade unit, she found herself at a crossroads. “Trade volumes suddenly dropped, and my workload with it. The suppliers, the buyers, everyone was anxious and uncertain.” Aunt Li watched her colleagues’ desks clear out, one by one. Customers paused orders, forcing factories to halt production. The city’s fabled skyline seemed to lose parts of its promise. “I was terrified. There’s not much I could’ve done. I sat at my workplace and watched deals canceled, and waited for new ones to come—which they never did. These days, I followed up with customers and factories that I’ve worked with recently. And eventually, I tried contacting all potential buyers and producers I knew. To be fair, there were still tasks for me, so I wasn’t starving or unemployed,” she recalls, tapping the table. “My day became a lot more empty, and my wallet was emptying as well, haha.” Economically, something in her snapped: “I thought that if my efforts at work could suddenly vanish and trade wouldn’t recover, then perhaps foreign trade isn’t the best job. Maybe I needed a vocation impervious to the uncertainties of geopolitics and swings of the market.” But Aunt Li’s transformation was more than economical. Docks hummed with empty containers outside. Aunt Li felt empty inside. She yearned for purpose.

Following her colleagues, she signed up for volunteer spots at community centers. Curious to see if compassion could fill the void, she started as volunteer librarians, then took on more challenging roles that required interactions with all sorts of people: from minors to seniors, athletes to the disabled. She watched as visually impaired kids learned to walk in a straight line, and as stroke survivors challenged themselves in charity swimming contests. “I was moved,” she said. “There were always people full of gratitude. They’d thank me, time and again. As if I saved their life or did something else hugely substantial. ‘It’s ok, no problems, that’s my job as a volunteer,’ I told them. But they were grateful regardless. Talking to these people, sharing moments of tears and laughter, felt really different. If you had held a toddler’s hand, you would know the difference.”

This “different” experience would soon prove life-changing. One evening, a colleague who always volunteered at a Longgang kindergarten called her, informing her that their volunteer spots were filled by full-time social workers from then on. “All this time I spent as a volunteer, I was progressively gravitating towards more serious volunteer work—social work, though I might not have realized until that evening. The volunteer spots were no longer available to the public, so I thought, ‘I might as well try becoming a social worker,’ and I needed a certificate for that.” Having self-studied through online courses and books, she remembers staying up past midnight poring over definitions and real-life scenarios. In 2020, she passed the National Social Worker Professional Qualification Exam (社会工作者职业水平考试) and became a licensed Junior Social Worker (助理社会工作师), swapping shipping ledgers for evaluation rosters.

“At first, I didn’t feel pain,” he said. “I felt the soft, muddy ground. The heat. I heard a few shouting near me. When other workers pulled the brick off, I saw my muddy, bloody left leg bending inward at a weird, impossible angle. It was then that I realized that I was in serious trouble.” A site manager called an ambulance. “The doctors said the leg was infected, and that had it not been infected, it probably won’t recover either, with old leg problems added to this recent injury. Even if the leg stays on my body, it will feel as disconnected as it could, maybe except the pain. They told me they had to amputate my left leg below the knee. ‘The sky is falling,’ I thought. I felt my life practically ending, me becoming crippled, deformed, a waste. But it wasn’t as if the doctors would sit down and chat with you and work carefully for a perfect solution. They were very busy. They spoke fast. They didn’t have time for emotions. I had to say yes to amputation. They told me that at least with prosthetics, I can learn to walk. (Though, if my [sub]contractor refuses to compensate for my injury at work, how expensive would that be?) I lied in my bed and started thinking about my future. The next thing I heard the doctors say was that my infection got too bad. Amputating half a leg wasn’t enough.” After a quick surgery, Uncle He lost his entire leg.

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“It felt like my body was gone. One side of me was empty. At first there wasn’t much pain, and the world for the most part acted like nothing changed. Except that my sister went to Shenzhen to take care of me. But then weird feelings came. I felt my left leg itching, but when I sat up, I found myself having nothing to scratch. My leg vanished.”

Uncle He, however, had grown unexpectedly familiar with these legal concepts, having heard the Legal Consultation Office describe notarization for the seventh time. Yet he faced another obstacle. “My mother, she’s past seventy,” Uncle He explained. “Her health is in bad shape since I lost my leg, barely enough to take care of herself on her own. My injury was a blow for her. Her memory is getting worse, and her mind is slowing too. Having her travel to and attend the township notarization office is simply way too much fuss. She’d have to bring her documents, request forms, fill out the declaration, all that stuff. She’s illiterate, so who knows what could happen with the paperwork? So the only option is for some other trustworthy person to accompany her. My sister’s living at another place with her husband now, and needless to say, my brother wouldn’t volunteer to have my mother hand me the apartment that he really wants to have. It’s unrealistic for me, in my wheelchair, to travel over a thousand kilometers back just for notarization. And even if I did, a disabled person accompanying an old person wouldn’t be of much help…” The required forms, stamps, and in-person visits presented insurmountable challenges for a man whose own mobility necessitated a prosthetic. In He’s case, the absence of a robust, publicly recognized trust system meant there was no third-party institution to safeguard his mother’s intention and his rights without requiring direct handover of the deed.

"For other migrant workers, especially if you don’t work for a factory or some other reliable company with clear records, keep records yourself. Organize your contracts, attendance logs, photos of where you work, etc. If you ever get injured, keep record, don’t panic, and seek legal aid early. The Disability Service Center could help if you become disabled, but it’s usually more convenient to first contact social workers in your community. Each Community Service Center has a social worker dedicated to helping the disabled, and he could orient you before you visit the Disability Center in person. Some of the services here require prior appointment, and the community social worker can help with that as well. But nobody can rely on the help of others forever, especially financially. Save what and when you can. Trust your family members but get it in writing. 亲兄弟明算账 (literally meaning: keep clear accounts even with one’s brothers; usually applied to siblings with financial transactions/deals to indicate that “even reckoning makes long friends”). And importantly, never lose hope. Even without a leg, I still found ways to keep going."

"I’m more of a problem-oriented person as opposed to an emotion-oriented one. Some visitors have a mental breakdown when they come to my desk. Before I even asked, they noticed they forgot to bring their Disability Identity Cards. They explode, bursting into tears. I tell them: ‘it’s ok, search slowly, no panic, we’ll figure out a solution.’ Chances are, showing the ID card alone is enough because the Disability Card is already checked at the earlier stage of making the appointment. There’re other cases where win-win solutions are nonexistent, though. Some come at the wrong time. Say, they reserved an evaluation time slot yesterday but came today. Well, they’ll have to go back and make another appointment. The Service Center pays experts working at hospitals to be visiting evaluators here. Many come for a single day every few weeks. If the expert on their field was here yesterday but not today, there’s no way for us to get the visitor an evaluation. You can’t ask the expert to come for you exclusively, right? The expert has their own job at the hospital, so there’s a time issue. On top of that, the Center can’t afford to hire the expert for another day. We spend the taxpayers’ money and report to the government. How do we explain the additional cost just for serving a single person? Some visitors are really stubborn. They won’t leave until they get the subsidy. We just leave them alone in that case. That’s the thing about being social workers: sometimes, there’s no solution out there."