Visually impaired girl's road to entrepreneurship

A short video, “Yinqing’s World,” has garnered 15 million clicks and 200,000 thumbs-up. It is a record of a girl’s trip to her favorite pop star’s concert. She wore a navy-colored hanfu dress and waved fluorescent rods to the rhythmic music. But for a guide dog and its vest, few would have noticed the vision-challenged concertgoer.

Ma Yinqing, who belongs to the post-90s generation, launched a short video entrepreneurship at Wisdom Park in Huacao Town, Minhang District, to shed light on visually handicapped people’s lives.

Ma, who was born prematurely, became blind from an incubator oxygen overload and spent her life in darkness.

Still, she graduated with excellence from the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in 2018.

Instead of working as a massage therapist after college, Ma started an audiobook production company on Himalaya FM with other members, three-fourths of whom are disabled employees.

“Our society has advanced since the 1990s. It is unfair that most sight-impaired people work as massage therapists,” Ma said. “It’s terrible that we spent our lives doing something we didn’t like.”

“As long as I have tried, all my accomplishments and failures are my life treasure.”

The young female entrepreneur in Wisdom Park was not pretentious.

Since childhood, Ma has loved drama, and in 2018, she launched Shanghai Yinqing Culture and Media Co after hearing audio novels online. Their business was to sell audiobooks online. Three months after starting her company, Ma didn’t get a single order or earn any income.

“I didn’t fear failure. I just wanted to show that visually challenged people can do more than be massage workers and that opportunities exist,” Ma said.

After weeks of looking for businesses online, Ma inked a partnership arrangement with a company and finally had a breakthrough.

When recording for an audiobook, a visually impaired person needs two headsets: one transmits sounds from a reading and listening program three times faster than usual, and the other allows the visually impaired person to replicate their emotions at a regular pace.

In the following years, the company produced hundreds of audio novels and earned millions of yuan until artificial intelligence and the epidemic hit them.

Defying failure

The number of visually impaired people in China has risen to 17.3 million, according to the 7th national population census, but they are hiding or partially disguising themselves from society,” Bi Feiyu, author of the novel “Massage,” said.

Ma faced additional hurdles as she transitioned from audiobooks to short video creation, including a shift in technology, an increase in production difficulty and even making an appearance on camera.

The video that went viral and documented her route to the performance sparked online debate.

“How could a blind person afford a concert ticket plus the training of a guide dog?” a poster quizzed.

“Is it because you’re sight challenged that your story has become a big issue online?” another inquired.

The comments upset Ma, but they fueled her determination to give others a glimpse into the lives of the visually impaired.

“Few people were aware that the visually impaired may use cellphones to talk, comment online, order food and call a taxi,” Ma said. “And few of them were aware that a visually impaired person and their guide dog could face numerous challenges and misunderstandings on their trips.”

Some even wondered why she hadn’t chosen a massage job in the first place.

This second venture also aided Ma in breaking out of her comfort zone and becoming more self-righteous and bold in the face of society’s prejudice toward the visually impaired.

Ma started a non-profit program called Darkness Trip, in which people were invited to wear eye masks and complete chores with a white cane or accompanied by a guide dog.

“Some patients with depression participated in the activities, and after experiencing life in the dark, they became more courageous because frustrations and tragedies in life may still be removed compared to the irreversible truth of organ loss,” Ma said.

She was also invited to a program on teenage mental health and life education.

“My world is colorless, but now I can see light through the events I’m doing,” Ma said.

Ma has been honored with numerous titles, including young entrepreneur, female entrepreneur and Forbes celebrity, but her favorite is that of a post-90s ordinary girl.