Guo Xiangge, 24, is the owner of an apple store in a village of Linyi county, in North China's Shanxi province. In contrast to other online store owners, she can only use her nose and her chin to manipulate a computer. She was born in 1991 and suffered brain damage due to oxygen deprivation.
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| Guo Xiangge uses her computer. [Photo/Youth.cn] |
Guo Xiangge's father is a teacher in the village; her mother is an ordinary rural woman. Guo never studied in the classroom because of her physical problems. While other children ran happily around and went to school together, Guo suffered serious problems of self-esteem. Most of her life was spent crouched in a chair in the corner of a room.
At the age of 11, she learned the Chinese phonetic alphabet with the help of a neighboring girl. From then on, the dictionary became her partner. "Thanks to my neighbor, I learned to read, write, and search the internet. I wore out seven dictionaries in my years of study," says Guo.
In 2007, she invented a unique method of using the computer that her elder brother had given her. Searching the internet by typing on the keyboard with her nose and sliding the mouse with her chin broadened her horizons.
Guo Xiangge opened an online apple store this year. She wants to support herself and the whole family by selling the specialty in her home town. " I want to raise the public profile of all the people in a similar situation to me. I want to find help. I want to add color to our lives," says Guo.
