A CREATIVE SPIRIT THAT CONQUERS CHALLENGES

Artist in a wheelchair's one-woman show tells her story with passion and compassion, Cheng Yuezhu reports.

Last year, video blogger and wheelchair user Zhao Hongcheng spoke at the UK-China Disability Arts Forum, sharing her everyday life experience and reviewing barrier-free facilities at public places, including the metro, sightseeing spots and theaters.

Just a year later, Zhao attended the fifth edition of the forum, but this time she has taken on the role of a theater performer, with her own one-woman show Be Seen, which won Best Innovative Play at the Seventh Chinese Theatre Awards.

Not only is the play a solo performance, it is also based on her true story. In the production, she talks of her experience of being "othered", her relationship with her mother, as well as the complexity of her personality, with both optimism and anger, tenacity and insecurity.