Prostheses made by talented ocularist aim to provide a comfortable solution for people with monocular issues, Li Yingxue reports.

She checks on a customer's eye condition. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

The room was dark. As Liu Siyao waved her finger in front of her right eye, her pupil instantly lit up with a beam of blue light.

The effect, akin to something from a sci-fi movie, appears in a video made by Liu, which quickly gained popularity after she posted it online. The 27-year-old ocularist made the cyberpunk accessory herself by implanting a small chip into her own prosthetic eye and holding a magnetic switch in her hand.

I believe it’s a profession in which I have unique experience, and therefore, it will provide me with more room for future development.

Liu Siyao, ocularist

Liu, who goes by the handle Xintong on social media, has been busy since her ocular prosthesis studio opened last year in Beijing, with constant orders coming in from people across the country with monocular visual impairment.

She aims to make ocular prostheses that look as natural as possible, are comfortable to wear and able to bring confidence to the lives of people in China with monocular issues.

Liu's dream was to be a dancer, and she began learning at 8 years old. However, she lost her right eye in a car accident in 2013, which shattered her dream of commanding the stage and reveling in applause.

She implanted an ocular prosthesis to replace her right eyeball, which was removed in a surgery after the accident, but the artificial eye was neither comfortable nor looked natural.

She also had to make adjustments to the way she lived her life, particularly having to walk slowly and carefully, one step at a time, as following the accident and subsequent surgery, she would often stumble on stairs and trip while walking in the street.

It took time to adapt to her impaired spatial awareness and depth perception — she had to turn her head a full 180 degrees when crossing a road and she often found herself banging into things while dancing.

Liu Siyao makes a customized ocular prosthesis, which takes from three to fives days to finish. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

The first three months after the accident were the worst, a period she describes as her darkest time, during which she was irritable and sensitive.

"For a long time, I couldn't face the reality that I now have only one eye, and I was afraid of looking at myself in the mirror and seeing the wound," she recalls.

It was around half a year before Liu started reaching out to friends and dancing again. It really took time and patience to accept her new situation and her own sensitivity, she says.

After graduating from college, Liu became a dance teacher for children.

On one occasion, during dance practice, her prosthetic eye fell out of its socket because she was pirouetting so fast. Her first reaction was to cover her right eye as she was worried about the terrified reaction of others seeing the empty eye socket. "I was embarrassed, it was like being naked in the middle of the room," she recalls.

Liu joined some chat groups for others with the same issue, and found that many of their experiences were similar. They encountered many problems in life, at work and in relationships. In society, it seemed, some people understood, while others were repelled.

Prosthetic eyes manufactured in China are currently divided into two categories — large-scale production and custom-made. Each person's eyes are different in size, color and even the distribution of blood vessels, so a finished prosthetic eye is rarely very realistic.

An artificial eye she has made. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Liu started to wonder whether she could make better artificial eyes for herself and others like her. She says that she knew what the availability of a comfortable and realistic prosthetic eye would mean to those in the group: It would be the key to rediscovering their confidence and fully return to society.

In 2020, Liu quit her job and decided to be an ocularist, despite opposition from her family.

"They think I will struggle to make a living from the new job, but I believe it's a profession in which I have unique experience, and therefore, it will provide me with more room for future development," she says.

It took her more than a year to learn how to make a prosthetic eye, which is still a niche field in China. From fully understanding the structural characteristics of Asian people's eyeballs to a knowledge of art and sensitivity for color, Liu had to work on each aspect to make prosthetic eyes, practicing thousands of times to perfect the necessary skills.

As well as learning from experienced professionals as an apprentice, she also sought information from foreign courses and taught herself different aspects of the trade.

Most of the steps of making an artificial eye require careful handwork and a high level of patience.

First, she creates a mold, based on the patient's eye socket, which she uses to craft a custom-fitted prosthesis. She usually uses a macro super high-resolution camera to take a picture of the client's functional eye to re-create the eye's shape and color.

"At the corners of the eye, there's a little pink part, which I will paint onto the artificial eye, as well as the blood vessels, so that it looks more realistic," she says, adding that comfort is another key aspect.

Liu at work making an ocular prosthesis. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Each artificial eye takes from three to five days to make. Creating the prosthesis is not the end of Liu's work, however, as she provides ongoing care and adjustment to ensure that the prosthesis remains in good condition, as well as answering questions from her clients.

After she opened her studio last year and started sharing her story and information about her ocular prostheses on Douyin (the Chinese iteration of TikTok), many people with monocular vision impairment contacted Liu online for a consultation.

Liu needed to see pictures of their eyes first, but some were embarrassed to send her the photos.

"They worried that I would be intimidated. Some of them had atrophied eyes, some of their eyes were removed and some had pupils that had turned blue, which are all quite common conditions for people with a single working eye," she says, adding that the consultations became more of a process to get them to open up.

She has received many letters of thanks from her clients and their families, many of which have moved her, and she says that she is glad to see them find their way back into society with confidence.

Shi Bochong, 28, who had an accident 20 years ago that caused him to lose the sight in his right eye, saw Liu's videos on Douyin in November and immediately decided to contact her about making him a prosthetic eye.

"I was excited when I saw that her artificial eye could move with the other eye and that it looked quite natural," Shi recalls. He got his family's support and flew to Beijing to meet Liu and get his prosthetic eye made.

The tool she uses. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

His right eye has been half-closed for the past two decades and the moment the artificial eye was implanted, both his eyes opened. "I feel so happy, and so does my family, they made a video call to Liu to thank her," Shi says.

Shi says he is an optimistic man and he likes to take photos and videos, even though he was unable to open his right eye before. With the new prosthetic eye, he says that he feels more confident and looks in the mirror more often.

"People around me say that I have become more handsome and energetic," he says.

For Liu, one advantage of being an ocularist is to achieve a kind of freedom of expression with her prosthetic eyes. She now has around a dozen, each with a different pattern, or that can light up in different colors. She describes them as "large cosmetic contact lenses".

A customized prosthetic eye costs around 6,943 yuan ($1,000), which is a bit of a burden for some families, so Liu launched a charity event, through which she is making 10 prosthetic eyes for free to help people that are burdened with financial difficulties.

Liu read in the news that there are currently around 5 million people with monocular vision impairment in China, so she plans to open more branches of her business in other cities, such as Shanghai and Guangdong's Guangzhou, so that some of her clients won't have to travel as far.

She says that she also hopes to further improve her skills by studying abroad, so that she can make better prosthetics to help more people.

Contact the writer at liyingxue@chinadaily.com.cn