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" The Chinese language shaped the perceptions of disability that my immigrant parents carried with them to their new homes. It wasn’t until the 1990s, for instance, that the Chinese characters used to refer to people with disabilities changed from canfei (useless) to canji (sickness or illness); the push to understand disability as a social construct has been under way for less than a decade. Media professionals in China are now encouraged by the Chinese disability advocacy organization One Plus One to use the characters cán zhàng (disabled and obstructed) when reporting on disability issues. But such language remains a suggestion rather than an expectation, and its impact has yet to filter out to the public. "

Alice Wong , Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century


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Alice  Wong quote : The Chinese language shaped the perceptions of disability that my immigrant parents carried with them to their new homes. It wasn’t until the 1990s, for instance, that the Chinese characters used to refer to people with disabilities changed from canfei (useless) to canji (sickness or illness); the push to understand disability as a social construct has been under way for less than a decade. Media professionals in China are now encouraged by the Chinese disability advocacy organization One Plus One to use the characters cán zhàng (disabled and obstructed) when reporting on disability issues. But such language remains a suggestion rather than an expectation, and its impact has yet to filter out to the public.