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UPDATED: September-5-2008  
Publishers Serving the Disabled
By CUI LILI

Chinese Dactylology, the first standard sign language dictionary in China, was recently published by the Huaxia Publishing House. With 3,329 entries and a convenient searching index, it has been applauded by the society.

As the only publishing house in China specializing in serving the disabled, the Huaxia Publishing House has published more than 650 varieties of books, more than 40 million copies, during the past four years since it was established in 1986. Among them, 92 are about the rehabilitation, education, life, laws and regulations, and social welfare of the disabled. Exclusive reference books such as Chinese Dactylology, have earned the publishing house an excellent reputation in the market.

There are more than 50 million disabled people in China. Together with their relatives, the number of affected people amounts to 200 million. The goal of the 160 staff members when they started the publishing house was that disabled people should have their own domain in the field of books to voice their aspirations and strive for the understanding and respect of society.

The publishing house has published 35 autobiographies and collections about disabled people such as Legend of A One-legged General (China), What Can Death Do to Me (USSR), If You Could See What I Hear (US)and From Blind Child to Literary Giant (Lebanon). By presenting the true lives of the heroes and heroines, the books vividly expose the physical, emotional and psychological difficulties of the disabled which can hardly be experienced by normal healthy people. These are success stories in which self-respect, self-confidence, self-reliance and independence are finally achieved.

Epic of Life (US) tells the story of an American child, Kenny, who lost his legs in his childhood. By compensating with his hands, Kenny not only managed to take care of himself, but also persisted in going to school and participating in activities. In the end, he became a star in the skating rink. A disabled young woman wrote to the publishing house after she read the book, "It is my spiritual crutch."

Psychoanalysis of the Disabled, Glistening Love, Not Broken in Spirit, Remnant Lotus Has Roots and Let Us Understand Each Other all reveal the rich inner world of disabled people and promote understanding. In addition, the books also tell many moving stories of how society helps the disabled and gives them courage to live on.

Correspondence Teaching Material for Parents of Deaf Children is made up of 12 volumes. It teaches parents how to design games and develop their deaf children's language ability using the child's remnant aural and audio abilities and psychological make-up. Because the teaching materials are practical in content and reasonable in price, the set is quite popular.

Books belonging to this category also include the following: Guidelines for Deaf Children's Education, Training Road for Disabled and Mentally Retarded Children, Handbook for Surgical Rehabilitation of Polio Sequelae, Massage Therapy, and Disabled and Sex: Sex Rehabilitation for the Disabled.

At present, this publishing house is planning its publications for the next few years. They include a series of books relating to China's rehabilitation undertakings and the compiling of an encyclopedia for the disabled.

In addition to the Huaxia Publishing House, 13 other publishing houses have so far published 35 titles of books concerning the rehabilitation of disabled people. China also has a special braille publishing house.

(Beijing Review p33 No. 51, 1990)


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