"Exams," she said, "put me in a bad mood."
Studying, however, makes her happy, which is why her family and Professor Wan have been struggling for so long to pry open the doors to institutions of higher education.
"Because of her paralysis, people mistake her for being retarded. And there's a cultural aversion among older people to getting too near to someone with disabilities. There's a kind of superstitious belief that there's something wrong with them," Fu-hua's mother said.
Then there's the absurdity of the entrance-exam system, to which her parents could only shrug their shoulders. "That's not something that will change any time soon," her father said.
For now, the struggle is all-encompassing to prevent Fu-hua from slipping into depression, as she was prone to do when she first woke from her 4-month coma and could not yet communicate. Her mother said that Fu-hua would sometimes lay in her room crying inconsolably through the night, and even years later, after they had begun working together to build complete sentences, she would sometimes write out: "I want to die."
The point made in the film, though, is that Fu-hua is not only exceptional for her physical and mental state, but she has also become something of a role model to other disabled people and their families for her optimism. She is also an eloquent spokeswoman for the educational rights of the disabled, saying that through literature, she wants to "spread love to every corner of the world."
"Hopefully, with Chasing Dreams in the Dark, we can gather some momentum behind a movement to allow greater flexibility for entering university in cases like Fu-hua's, or for improving the education of Wen-kuei and Wei-chih," Wan said.
To purchase a copy of Chasing Dreams in the Dark, contact the Huei-Ming School and Home for Blind Children at (04) 2566 1024. Proceeds will be donated to the school.
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