Shiyin??’s Blog

How did I start with “Dialogue”? 

Many people asked this question – of course, from GE CTO to fashion and then to full-time social worker, it seems to be quite unusual to most people. 

It’s definitely not of my choice, I have to say, God led me to where I am now and I am just learning to follow it.

My encounter started with meeting Sabriye Tenberken – the legendary German blind lady that invented Tibetan braille and started the first blind school in Tibet. In December 2008, I did a fashion show in Innsbruck and my PR agency was also the PR started the “Life award”. Sabriye won the grand award that year and I had the honor to meet her. I was so impressed by her charm and strength that I invited her to model our clothes on the next day – of course, she was the star. 

One year later, during my driving trip to Tibet, I stopped by at the school in Lhasa and was so moved by the children there that I started to volunteer for the school. Through working with them, I learned more and more about visually impaired people and realized that the biggest problem they have is not the “handicap” itself, but the stereotype and prejudice the society has towards them – they can almost do everything but the society won’t give them an equal opportunity. 

In December 2009, I was in Atlanta having dinner with a friend – the CIO of Southern company and told her the story of the blind school. She then told me about the “Dialogue in the dark” exhibition right next door and we took a tour right after – it was such an amazing experience and I was convinced that this is the way to solve the root-cause: to change the “sighted” people’s mindset. I signed up as a fan of “Dialogue in the dark” on Facebook, and the news that it was looking for a COO showed up at the top of my homepage when I signed in Facebook for the first time after three months (it is blocked in China). In the beginning of March 2010, I finally met the “legendary” Andreas Heinecke – the founder of the whole “Dialogue kingdom” and his wife Orna and we talked for 3 hours. After numbers of Skype interview with almost everybody in the company and a online personality test, I started the job part-time remotely from China in April and full-time in July. 

It was not an easy decision to completely switch to full-time working on social project – honestly it had never crossed my mind before and this was not the culture that I was brought up with. Lots of things I had to give up in order to take this role, however, I am convinced that this is doing something good with what I am good at – the way to maximize my value to the society – I think I have finally found myself and my direction.

After almost 5-hour drive, I finally arrived in Frankfurt am Main – made a stupid mistake: I set the destination to Dialog Museum, while Orna and the others are at the Museum of Communications where the „Dialog im Stillen (Dialogue in silence)“ exhibition is. So it took me an extra hour to find the restaurant where Orna and the three master trainers were at – Fondue at the Oper Frankfurt.

This is for sure one of the most memorable meals in my life: since Tali, Susan and Pachan are mute trainers, we had to use sign language to communicate with each other! I am a person that likes to talk and highly rely on verbal communications. This is definitely a brand new and challenging experience for me, but very quickly I  started to fall in love with this complete new language: Sign language is a much more straight forward and open language than any of the verbal languages I know – it actually reminded me of the ancient Chinese how every character was created at the very beginning.

Susan and Pachan are actress/actor, Tali has a PhD and she leads all the guides in Israel – they are the best teachers that I can have! Since they are from Germany, France and Israel, I soon learned that each country has its own sign language and there is also an international sign language. A lot of times it’s also difficult for them to communicate with each other.

Over dinner, I learned already: France, Germany, Israel, China, Paris, Hamburg, Chef (boss), beautiful, sorry, thank you, please, translate, same, face, book, guide, drive, fly, year, month, day, today, yesterday, before, why, welcome, work hard…  – they opened a door to a complete new silent world and I was fascinated….

Everybody should go there and experience this new world!

www.dialog-im-stillen.de