When she was younger, English professor Yang Jia dreamed of being like characters in the books she read.

年少时，英语教授杨佳曾梦想能够像书中人物那般生活。

She imagined herself as the strong-willed and independent Jane Eyre, who struggles to be her own individual, or as the rich and beautiful Tonia Tumanova from the Russian novel How the Steel was Tempered.

她想象自己是意志坚强且独立的简•爱，顽强抗争，忠于自我；或是俄国小说《钢铁是怎样炼成的》中美丽富有的冬妮娅。

Instead, Yang said, she ended up more like the blind characters in those same books - Jane Eyre's love Mr. Rochester, or Pavel Korchagin, the hero who fought against his disability to achieve success.

相反，杨佳说，自己最终却处于和书中那些失明的主人公一样的境地——像简•爱的爱人罗切斯特先生，以及与残疾斗争最终取得成功的男主人公保尔•柯察金。

Yet the comparison with these characters is more than merely literary.

然而，同书中这些人物相比，杨佳的经历更具文学色彩。

At 29, Yang was diagnosed with macular degeneration, which first blurred her vision and then led to her ultimate blindness.

29岁那年，杨佳被确诊为视网膜黄斑部退化，起先她的视觉变得模糊不清，最终完全失明。

"Going blind was the watershed of my life. My focus shifted from outrunning others before turning 29 to transcending my own limits after it."

“失明成为我人生的一个分水岭。29岁之前，我是努力超越别人，29岁之后，我是在超越自我。”

And like those two strong-willed characters, Yang fought the odds to rise from her sudden blindness to became a well-respected social activist.

就像书中那些意志坚强的主人公们一样，杨佳在困境中顽强斗争，努力走出突然失明的阴影，最终成为了一名备受尊敬的社会活动家。

Yang, now 47, won admission to Zhengzhou University when she was 15. She was called a genius by her peers and topped her class every year in university.

现年47岁的杨佳，15岁时被郑州大学录取。那时她同龄人们称为天才，大学里她每年都再班级里名列前茅。

After three years of teaching at her alma mater following graduation, Yang proceeded to her master's degree at the Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

毕业后，她在郑州大学执教了三年的时间，之后她来到中国科学院研究生院继续攻读她的硕士学位。