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welcome to my page, I’m here to discuss the Ming sum school

• Chinese name: Ming sum school for blind girls https://baike.baidu.com/item/明心书院/1633518

• Geographic location: East of Liwan District Committee Covering an area of more than 200001.1m^2.

• Construction date 1912.

• Founding date 1882.

• History introduce

Ming Xin College was founded in 1912, but its origins can be traced back to 1889. In that year, it was Feng Xi, a Chinese-American doctor from Guangzhou Boji Hospital, who adopted four blind girls from the hospital and sent them to the girls' school attached to the hospital. Three years later, as the number of blind girls increased, Feng Xi rented a house on Renji Street and founded the School for Blind Girls to enroll blind girls from the community. Moreover, this girls' school hired Lai Ma from the Blind Infants' Home of Baling Hall as a teacher to teach the blind girls Braille, music, knitting, and so on. According to historical records, the school was located in the same building as the hospital. According to historical records, there was a fire at the site of the girls' school, and since the school needed to be expanded, in 1912, Feng Xi acquired land in Mingxin, Fangcun (the area around present-day Mingxin Road) to build a school building, and renamed the girls' school Mingxin College, which was the first school for the blind in Guangzhou.

• Unique part about this school

Although accessibility is an internationally recognized program to help people with disabilities, it is only in recent years that large and medium-sized cities in China have begun to put it on their urban construction agenda. However, the concept of barrier-free design in Guangzhou has a history of more than 90 years. Built in 1912 on Mingxin Road in Fangcun District, the main school building of Guangzhou's first school for the blind, the Mingxin Academy, was designed without a threshold to make it easier for the blind to walk. This precious cultural relic has been hidden for a long time and no one knows about it. At the end of 2001, it was almost "dismantled" as a Class D dangerous building, but later, after the active efforts of the cultural department and all sectors of the community, the emergency restoration of the building by removing the risk and reinforcing the building was finally accomplished and restored according to its original appearance. The first school for the blind in Guangzhou is located on Mingxin Road near the tunnel entrance in Fangcun District, also named after Mingxin Academy.

• Why is this school unique?

This is not only a proof that China had very advanced thinking and design a long time ago, and that it has progressed beyond its time with regard to social and civilizational issues.

citation:

Light Through Work in Canton, China" and Wang and You's articles.

Chao Wang, "Disability and Social Inclusion: The Blind Songstress in Early Twentieth Century Guangzhou," Frontiers of History in China, vol. 15, no. 4 (2020): 611-641.

Light Through Work in Canton, China: Ming Sum School for the Blind, 1889-1937. https://archive.org/details/lightthroughwork00byal/page/n11/mode/2up

Ming sum school. 1ãÖÝÑ°±¦Ö®·1/4´Å¡a¡aã÷ÐÄÊéÔo£o1ãÖݵÚÒ"ËùäУ(Í1/4). (n.d.). http://news.sina.com.cn/s/2004-08-27/14223513010s.shtml