Print

Mail

wiki links

FEATURE : Blind masseur builds business online

Despite being deaf and blind, 21-year-old Lu Kuan-liang, second right, talks to the press on Sunday at his massage parlor in Sinjhuang, Taipei County. He and his girlfriend operate the business together by using the Internet, while simultaneously participating in charity work. PHOTO: CNA

Lu Kuan-liang (盧冠良) is like many other young entrepreneurs trying to build up his business by aggressive online marketing.

Unlike most of his counterparts, however, he is deaf and blind, but he has refused to allow his disabilities hold him back — or his desire to help others.

With a special computer for the blind, the energetic Lu operates a massage parlor by promoting it on the Web, while at the same time using his skills to help those who help others.

Lu, who went blind at the age of six and became hearing-impaired during his teenage years, moved to Taipei from his hometown in central Taiwan soon after graduating from high school at the age of 18 to start a new life, anticipating that “there were a lot of job and business opportunities in the capital city.”

Lu and his girlfriend, 25-year-old Shih An-yu (石安玉), who is also visually impaired, soon set up a massage stand at night markets in Banciao (板橋) and Sinjhuang (新莊), hoping to drum up business.

They often returned home empty-handed, but undaunted, Lu put his computer skills to work to launch the Dab Hand Massage Studio with Shih’s help. In so doing, he created his own blog as well as a Web site for the studio to market the business.

He also started a community on the PTT Bulletin Board System (BBS) — the largest BBS in the world with more than 1.5 million registered users — to upgrade his operations online and to regularly update information on blind masseurs around the country.

Lu’s computer has a talking terminal — a speech synthesizer that converts text to speech. With hearing aids in both his ears, Lu digests the text and lines that appear on the display screen by listening to the computer’s voice.

More than 40,000 people have visited the studio’s Web site over the past three years, helping Lu put his name on the map, even during the economic downturn.

Making money, however, is not his only aim.

“While working to earn a living for myself, I also want to help more blind people like me,” he said during an interview at his home in Sinjhuang.

Despite their youth, Lu and Shih have demonstrated compassion and empathy for other disadvantaged people and those who go out of their way to help them.

Via the online bulletin board, they have offered free massages over the past two years to people who donated their receipts to charity.

If the number printed on the receipt, or uniform invoice, is selected in a monthly draw, the holder of the receipt wins a cash prize.

The couple have also visited nursing homes around the country to chat with the elderly and give them massages. In the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot, which devastated the southern part of the island in August, Lu and Shih also offered free massages to volunteers who helped deliver goods to victims or those who traveled to the ­­hardest-hit ­areas to help clean up and take care of evacuees.

They donated a month of their combined incomes to help storm survivors rebuild.

“I wasn’t able to clean up or deliver relief goods. All I could do is to give massages to my Sinjhuang neighbors who had traveled to southern Taiwan to work as volunteers in flood-affected areas,” Lu said.

In July, after reading a report from Lanyu (蘭嶼), or Orchid Island, about families who were living below subsistence levels, Lu spent NT$10,000 on 12 cartons of food and daily necessities at a discount mart and mailed them to a church on the island.

“They are the people I want to help,” Lu said. “But currently my higher goal is to help more visually impaired people find jobs.”

His strategy is to use his talking terminal to start a “house call” massage service — hiring unemployed people who can see to transport visually impaired masseurs or masseuses via motorbike to the residences of customers who order a massage online.

“The business would benefit both the blind and those who can see,” he said.
This story has been viewed 674 times.