Chen Guangcheng and braille

[Lu]

[troll]It'll be incomprehensible. Chen Guangcheng is blind, and therefore can only think in pinyin. Everyone knows Chinese cannot be expressed through phonetic scripts. [/troll]

Roddy-the-troll is raising an interesting side question. How did Chen Guangcheng learn to read? Wikipedia says there is a Chinese braille, so was everything he needed to learn about law available? Or did he have someone (his wife?) read it to him? Again according to wikipedia, Chinese braille writes the sound rather than the character (makes sense), but here is Chen quoting the classics, which would be a lot harder to understand just by sound than more modern writing. How does that work?

Starting a new thread rather than derailing the old one.

[icebear]

Wikipedia says there is a Chinese braille, so was everything he needed to learn about law available? Or did he have someone (his wife?) read it to him?

I've seen a number of recent articles that described all his prior legal studies as being with the assistance of his wife, who reads aloud to him.

[Meng Lelan]

From what I understand he did not have formal schooling until very late in life, and was not exposed to braille until after childhood. I work with the blind here in the US and I can tell you it is extremely difficult to learn braille after early childhood. So I am not really sure he would be able to rely solely on braille materials due to late exposure to braille. Yes, Chinese braille is based on pinyin. There is a very acute shortage of braille reading materials in China. Not sure about Taiwan though. In the US it is a legal requirement of schools to provide books and materials in braille per student request.