□ Yangtze River Daily reporter Ye Feiyan

"Uncle Zhou is going to publish a book again." When the news reached the School of Physical Science and Technology of Wuhan University, teachers and students who knew him well were happy for him.

For more than 30 years, Zhou Shun, who was blind at an early age due to congenital macular degeneration of the retina, relied on listening, memory, imagination and thinking, self-taught mathematics and physics textbooks, and published a university physics textbook. Now, the first volume of more than 4 pages of "Mathematics in Physics", which Zhou Shun spent more than four years compiling, has entered the editing process and is about to be printed.

■ Find physical beauty in the dark

Walking into the old residential building in Wuguo Community, the reporter met 51-year-old Zhou Shun, who moved calmly and smiled. A bed, a bookcase, a desk, and two chairs make up Zhou Shun's small bedroom, which is also his study where he usually reads and writes. Next to a computer on the desk are more than 30 old books, basically physics-related professional books.

Zhou Shun was found to have congenital retinal atrophy (diagnosed with congenital macular degeneration in 2003) at the age of two and was completely blind a few years later. He continued to complete elementary, junior high and high school by listening to his teachers, listening to his classmates read textbooks, and his father teaching him to write every night.

In high school, Zhou Shun fell in love with physics and especially admired Einstein, "His talent, sentiment, and moral character are great." Zhou Shun said that he liked this sentence: "Mathematics is the language of nature, and physics is the poetry of nature." "He looked for the beauty of nature, the beauty of life, in physics and mathematics. I also wanted to do something in physics, like Einstein.

When he graduated from high school in 1989, he was unable to go to college because of vision problems, which became an eternal regret in Zhou Shun's heart. In order to make a living, Zhou Shun went to Wuhan Blind School to study Chinese medicine massage for 3 years. After that, he became a massage doctor at the Wuhan Boiler Factory Staff Hospital.

In his spare time, Zhou Shun couldn't let go of his love for physics and began to study undergraduate physics and mathematics textbooks on his own. In advanced mathematics alone, he studied 4 different sets of textbooks, such as optics, heat, electromagnetism, atomic physics, and four major mechanics at the undergraduate level.

Living in a dark world, there are no colors, no patterns, everything can only be imagined. Zhou Shun said, "The most difficult part of learning is that it is particularly difficult to understand when it comes to solid geometry, physical formulas, and diagrams. I needed someone to hold my hand and teach me to draw one by one. Some "big guys" of four or five hundred pages, he read through and understood, it took him more than a year.

■ Publish books so that others can learn less detours

"During the learning process, I took a lot of detours. I hope that others have seen my experience and can learn more smoothly. In 2017, Zhou Shun dictated his experience of studying university physics to the volunteers, asking them to publish the "Mathematics in Physics". Yao Duanzheng, winner of the first National Famous Teacher Award and professor of Wuhan University, wrote the foreword to the book. She said: "Mathematical physics courses are quite difficult, although Zhou Shun is blind, he has mastered a wide range of mathematical knowledge in physics, and can write learning insights and experiences into books, what perseverance and courage it takes!" ”

After the book was published, Zhou Shun donated 500 copies to the School of Physics of Wuhan University for free use by students. Since October 2018, Zhou Shun has further expanded, revised and improved the content on the basis of "Mathematics in Physics", added new understandings and thinking, improved the breadth and depth of the content of the book, and prepared to upgrade the original 10-page book to more than 270 pages, which is planned to be published in two volumes, and the target audience is juniors and above who study physics knowledge.

After more than four years of collecting, understanding, sorting, checking and editing, the content of the first volume has been finalized to more than 420 pages. These manuscripts were dictated by Zhou Shun, and the students of "Zhou Shun's guided reading" typed out little by little. Type it out and read it again, read it and change it, and so on. "Without them, I wouldn't have been able to publish a book because I could only write plain text and couldn't type complex formulas and diagrams with a keyboard." Zhou Shun sighed.

Meng Qunkang, a graduate student majoring in microelectronics and solid-state electronics at Wuhan University of Things, said: "Uncle Zhou has read college-level physics books for many years, and his mastery of basic knowledge is much more solid than that of the vast majority of college students who have only studied one round, and he can accumulate and organize his ideas in repeated reading and repeated thinking. ”

■ I can't see with my eyes, but I still have hands and ears

In addition to mathematics and physics, Zhou Shun has also read many books on literature, history and philosophy. On the day the reporter went to Zhou Shun's home to interview, the audio of Jin Yong's martial arts novel was playing on his computer. The reporter noticed that the playback speed he set was several times the normal speech rate, so fast that the reporter could hardly catch the speech speed with his ears, and Zhou Shun was used to it. In another room, Zhong Guiyun, a mother in her 80s who is also studying, has always firmly supported her son, "It is good that he loves to read, and our whole family loves to read."

In recent years, Zhou Shun has also been carrying out reading promotion activities, actively participating in various forums and lectures held by Wuhan University, and calling on disabled people to participate in reading in the Wuchang District Disabled Persons' Federation held a lecture tour. Zhou Shun also brought together the students of "Zhou Shun Guide Reading" to enter the Wuhan Blind School to carry out the "Firefly Action", leading the blind school students to appreciate the wonders of the physics world through popular science lectures, physics experiments and other activities. In March this year, Zhou Shun's deeds touched many readers in the selection of the "Most Beautiful Reader" sponsored by the Wuhan National Reading Activity Steering Committee Office, and everyone voted for him and liked him through the voting platform of the official WeChat public account of Yangtze River Daily.

Faced with physical limitations, Zhou Shun is very calm, "I can't see with my eyes, but I still have hands and ears, I can study with more effort than ordinary people, there is nothing terrible."

... Behind the scenes...

■ 28 years of voluntary tutoring for martial arts teachers and students

In order to study more smoothly, Zhou Shun found several tutors. In 1995, Mao Youdong, a student at the School of Physical Science and Technology of Wuhan University (Wuhan University Library), met Zhou Shun by chance and was so impressed that he became his first volunteer tutor.

Initiated by Mao Youdong, more and more teachers and students of Wuhan University Institute joined the team of volunteering to read physics books for Zhou Shun, and officially established the "Zhou Shun Guide Reading" volunteer service project in 2003. Every Friday night, Saturday and Sunday, students come to the door to read for Zhou Shun, more than 20 years of batch after batch of readers, year after year of continuous relay, Zhou Shun's eyes of the world is still dark, but the physical world in his mind is becoming more and more vivid and colorful.

"Even though I have a lot of experience in explaining topics or expressing knowledge, I am still very unaccustomed to it when I go to guide Uncle Zhou for the first time." Meng Qunkang recalled that in 2019, when he was a sophomore, he joined the "Zhou Shun Guide Reading" volunteer service activity, "I found it difficult to express physical concepts in pure language, and some images that we take for granted became even more difficult with Uncle Zhou." I can't even express myself with body movements. Finally, Uncle Zhou took my hand and drew a picture on his leg, expressing the image through tactile means. This made me admire him even more for his ability to study physics without sight."

Zeng Yunhao, a 2020 undergraduate student of the Physics Strong Foundation Program of Wuhan University of Things, is currently the leader of the Zhou Shun Volunteer Team. He told reporters that after 2020, the guide reading will change from offline door-to-door face-to-face guidance to online voice guidance, and the books read will also change from paper books to various electronic books. During the online guided reading period, as more and more students joined, the format became more and more convenient, and the frequency of activities changed from the previous weekly weekend afternoon to 5 hours a day.

Ye Feiyan, a reporter from the Yangtze River Daily