In the unseen world, we learn to see again.
Beyond the Leash
By Yvette Liao, Cheng Shiyue, Xue Yuxiao, and Hu Congxi
In collaboration with Heile Social Enterprise
We often think of sight as something granted by nature, forgetting that to see is a choice.
Some collect the world through pupils; others trace its contours with fingertips.
And between them walks a quiet companion — the guide dog, whose leash divides not only space, but a society still learning to focus.
Li Liheng, a disability-rights lawyer, carves equality into law, one clause at a time.
Luo Jia, a self-media creator with over a million followers, turns daily life into testimony.
Dr. Wang Tao, a blind physician, moves between diagnosis and subway stations with unshakable calm, his guide dog Dingdang guiding him through sound rather than sight.
Through months of dialogue and filming, we met those who live and work in this unlit landscape — each one a distinct constellation of resilience.
Li Bingxin, a young scholar of traditional Chinese medicine, studies meridians she cannot see but knows by heart, always with her guide dog Ruyi by her side.
Cai Qionghui, Zhejiang’s first blind piano tuner, listens to the world in perfect pitch; her partner Aladdin is both assistant and friend.
Our cameras followed their footsteps through crowded streets, metro stations, and clinics, discovering how technology, empathy, and muscle memory weave new forms of navigation.
Their stories broke our inherited stereotypes: blindness is not darkness, but another way of perceiving light; guide dogs are not instruments, but co-workers shouldering the same invisible tension — alert, disciplined, and dignified.
Each tug on the leash is not obedience, but conversation — a language of trust that needs no translation.