The band is rehearsing.
Cheng Liting got her diving Certificate in Beijing.
Cheng Liting is adventurous.
Cheng Liting and Su Jiayu sang at Jenny's coming-of-age ceremony.
There is a group of people who have hardly ever studied music, but who have gathered together to form bands, play musical instruments and issue albums. Some of them are wheelchair-sitting, short, young but white-haired, and 2 meters tall but extremely fragile... They named the band 8772. All members are rare patients or persons with disabilities. Every Monday evening, they would rush from all sides of Beijing to a certain place, rehearse until late at night, and then disappear in the sea. Although life is labeled "rare" unlike ordinary people, music shows them another possibility of life.
Yangtze Evening News/Ziniu News Reporter Chen Yong
A special band was presented to the adults of the rare sick girl.
I love the world / the ever-changing world / I have a lot of aspirations / I can't achieve / I want to steal time / every moment / I wish every minute / second / a little slower...
This is a poem written by a little girl at the age of 12. The girl who wrote poems is Jenny. Now she is 18 years old. The poems she wrote at that time have also been compiled into a song called "To Live".
On October 3, a hotel in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, hosted Jenny's Adult Ceremony. When two guests from far away from Beijing presented the song to her, Jenny, lying in her cot, was filled with emotion and smiled. Jenny suffers from spinal muscular atrophy, a rare disease. As she grows older, she will lose her strength little by little, and eventually she may not even have the strength to breathe.
The singers for Jenny that day were Cheng Liting, who played the electric guitar in a wheelchair, and Su Jiayu, a 2-meter-tall bassist. They represent band 8772 to attend Jenny's Adult Ceremony. They are all Jenny's patients and are also rare patients.
Cheng Liting and Su Jiayu have not participated in such activities for the first time. Their rock band 8772, composed of rare patients and disabled people, has participated in public service performances many times. Through Cheng Liting's narration, we also know a story about her and her band.
The band's name is "8772", which means "Challenge of Illness"
Over the past four years since the band was formed, there have been more than ten members coming and going. At present, there are seven regular rehearsals in Beijing.
Lead singer and guitarist Cui Ying, percussion musician Zhang Xinyi and Wang Yiou suffered from osteogenesis imperfecta; Cheng Liting was wheelchaired because of childhood polio; keyboard player M was a person with limb disorders; albino patient Xie Yuan, and tall Marfan syndrome patient Su Jiayu.
Except for Wang Yiou, who learned piano as a child, almost no one else had a musical foundation. The instructor of the band and the lead singer of the Sky Band are instructing them to use and play their instruments one by one.
If nothing special happens, Cheng Liting drives an hour and a half from Daxing, Beijing, to Chaoyang District every Monday evening for regular band rehearsals, while other members gather from all sides of Beijing at the same time.
In the band, Cheng Liting now plays an electric guitar. When it comes to the choice of musical instruments, Cheng Liting said that it has gone through a process. "I like drums and keyboards, but because of physical constraints, can not control, so under the teacher's advice, we can only start with the smallest model of Ukulele."
"At first, I didn't even know what chord and pitch. Fortunately, I was instructed by my teacher." Other members of the band also worked very hard in rehearsal, Cheng said. Their rehearsals begin at 7 p.m., often ending in the early morning. After many rehearsals and performances, a group of rare sick members began to learn from scratch, and under the guidance of their teachers, they gradually began to improve, from music Xiaobai to their respective musicians.
Cheng Liting lives in a family of six with two sisters and one brother. Since childhood memory began, she has found that she is different from other children, others can run and fight arbitrarily, but she can only sit in a wheelchair and watch.
From her mother's mouth, she learned that when she was one year old, she had a sudden fever and had polio. Since then, although parents have traveled all over the country to seek medical treatment and spent a lot of money, but it has not improved, from now on, they can only rely on wheelchairs instead of walking. In 1999, Cheng Liting moved to Beijing with her family. Because of her disability, Cheng Liting can only study by herself at home according to borrowed textbooks. Fortunately, she has completed her secondary and tertiary courses along the way, and will soon graduate from the undergraduate course.
Before joining the band, Cheng Liting worked in a company for game animation design. One day in 2015, her good friend Cui Ying called her and said, "Some of our partners are going to form a band, and Wang Yiou. Come along, too!" Cheng Liting thought it was quite novel, but she was a little worried, "I can't do anything." "It's OK. Teachers taught it." So they became the first members of band 8772.
Cheng Liting introduced that the band was officially established in 2015. The band's name 8772 came from the distortion of the acronym "BTTZ".
This summer, "8772" ushered in shining moments.
After years of hard training, the band 8772 ushered in their shining moment this summer. On the evening of August 14, 8772 band held the first album "Never Rare" singing conference in Beijing Xinjiang Jiujiu OMNI SPACE. It is reported that many famous bands, including new trousers and hedgehog bands, have performed here.
In the evening, they sang 11 original songs, which were composed by members of the band and written by patients, telling stories of rare patients.
On the stage, the wheelchair was shaking slightly when Cui Ying, the lead singer and guitarist, swept the strings; Wang Yiou was beating the drum and shelf heartily; Cheng Liting isolated herself from the sound of the electric guitar; Xie Yuan, a rhythmic guitarist, shook a dazzling white hair; Su Jiayu, a bassist, seemed to forget the pain at that moment...
When they repeated, "Never Rare, no one has to say sorry" and "Never Rare Never Rare, I'm never rare..." In fact, I want to tell people: "I hope everyone can see a real us, we are just ordinary people, just happen to have a rare disease." At the end of the conference, more than 300 people applauded. The parents who came to watch the show said to Cheng Liting, "We are very touched today. You are very handsome today." Cheng Liting also felt that the night was "very exciting".
As a rare patient, Cheng Liting heard most about "you are too difficult", but she was more eager for others to see their group correctly. "Without sympathy and compassion, we acknowledge our differences from ordinary people, but we want to show the public a real face." Cheng Liting introduced that this is also the original intention of the band: "Let more sick and disabled friends get resonance and strength from music."
Cheng Liting said that after a performance, a sick friend's words made her particularly moved. "He said that people like us who look different don't leave too many traces in history. But after seeing our performances, I believe that some people will surely see that people like us once lived in the world.
Every member has a small dream that he will never give up.
Cheng Liting said that whenever she played the guitar, she was isolated from the outside world. "All the happy and unhappy things in life are gone, only the voice of herself and the guitar is in her heart." She finds it hard to really get involved when she grows up, but she finds it in the band.
In fact, Cheng Liting had a wonderful life. Among the first batch of people in Beijing to test for a driver's license for the disabled, she passed the test one-time. She was able to communicate with people fluently in English when traveling abroad. Opening an online shop has already sent goods to all parts of the world. She has also participated in skydiving trips abroad, and has also been diving in Hainan and Taiwan. What makes her proud is that she also got a diving Certificate in Beijing this year.
However, when it comes to diving certificates, Cheng Liting told reporters that the process was rather tortuous. "There is no relevant experience in diving certificate examination for disabled people in China. Normal people can control posture and swimming with their feet on webs underwater, but I can only rely on my hands, and then do some actions below, and learn to control posture. These are particularly difficult, and there is no relevant experience to refer to." She said that in fact, the coach is also exploring teaching, diving weight problem tried a lot of methods to solve, debugging equipment also spent a lot of energy.
Fortunately, in the end, all these difficulties have been solved. This textual research experience also enables coaches to accumulate experience in barrier-free diving, which can be used as a reference for the disabled in the future.
Cheng Liting said that after joining the band, she also learned a lot. All the songs of her band are original and related to rare diseases. In the process, she saw many stories of other people.
Everyone in the band has their own life. Wang Yiou, who once founded the Porcelain Doll Rare Care Center, is now the Secretary-General of the Pain Challenge Foundation. Cui Ying and Su Jiayu also serve in the Foundation. Xie Hangcheng works as a part-time music teacher in a primary school for migrant children.
Since its establishment four years ago, the band 8772 has held dozens of performances, has more than a dozen original songs, and has a small reputation in the public welfare circle.
They say that music makes them see another possibility of life. Every member is chewing on the hardships of their lives, but everyone is doing happy things together.
They want to use music to show people the real state of the rare patients, and show the story of the patients by singing, which is the voice of the rare diseases. This is the little dream they can't give up in their ordinary life.
