WITH the flame gradually extinguished, the closing ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Paralympic Winter Games neared its end.

For Ma Yifei, a 16-year-old visually impaired girl, the violin performance of the Beijing 2022 theme song, Snowflake, is her best present for Paralympians across the globe.

When playing the piece, Ma thought of athletes with disabilities who had worked so hard to hone their skills to the top level.

“I felt very empowered. I’m also a person with disabilities and want to do something for them with my music,” she said.

Four days before the closing ceremony, Ma received a call and knew that she would be performing in Beijing. While she only had a few days to rehearse, behind her performance was a girl’s pursuit of her dreams for more than a decade.

Ma is a sophomore in Ningxia Special Education High School in China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, who lost her eyesight at the age of two through illness.

Ma became interested in music when she was young. She started to learn to play the piano at five and violin at nine, experiencing the “colorful” music through sound, temperature, atmosphere and emotion.

“Sadness or joy, each piece is different,” she said, adding that although Snowflake is related to winter, she can feel “warmth, hope and light.”

Ma’s mother Ha Chunyan, a former music teacher in primary school, helped her memorize the music score before playing.

“She could not see the keys and always played the wrong notes. It took a few thousand times for her to play a piece correctly,” said Ha, adding her daughter was persistent in chasing her dreams. “Despite being a small child, she sat there for three or four hours when practicing the piano.”

Learning the violin was tougher for the visually impaired girl. Ma had problems pulling a straight bow, so she needed to feel the teacher’s hands, arms and back to learn the movements, and listen to the strings over and over again to feel the muscles herself.

“After three years of learning, she still could not make any sound except squeaky noises,” said Ha, who advised her daughter to give up, but Ma said, “As I’ve been practicing so long, it’s hard to give up. I believe it will get better if I persist.”

In 2018, she had the chance to follow Sheng Yuan and Cao Yuhan, famous musicians from the Central Conservatory of Music of China, to study music and start her long schooling journey from Yinchuan to Beijing. Her parents took turns accompanying her to Beijing every week.

Despite the financial burden on the family, Ha feels that it is all worth it for the sake of her daughter’s dream. (Xinhua)