[A City for All] 'We Just Keep Going': Twin Brothers Move Through Shanghai Without Sight

On most mornings in Shanghai, Yin Tianbao and Yin Tianyou leave home and begin a journey that takes about an hour and a half – buses, subway transfers, and stretches of walking guided by sound, memory and repetition.

The twin brothers, aged 27, run a café, train regularly, and move through a growing list of physical pursuits. They are also completely blind.

In another telling, that fact might anchor everything that follows. For them, it rarely does. It sits instead alongside work shifts, training sessions, and commutes – one element of an otherwise ordinary life.

"Break through. Take on the challenge," Tianyou said.

The impulse to test limits has carried the brothers through much of their adult lives, from marathons and boxing to running a café. It began on a football field.

In 2006, Shanghai established one of China's earliest blind football teams, recruiting players from the city's school for visually impaired students. Tianbao and Tianyou encountered the sport there while still in primary school.

At first, running was simply part of football training, laps around fields, instructions shouted from the sideline, bodies learning distance without sight.

"One kilometer became two, then five," Tianyou recalled.

When he first began competing, he remembered fear more than speed.

"I was afraid of colliding with people," he said. "Later I realized, whether you're afraid or not, you still collide. That changed how I think."

The brothers would later represent Shanghai in national Paralympic competitions. The team they played for now faces an uncertain future as participation has declined, but football had already done its work. It taught them how to enter unfamiliar spaces without waiting to feel ready. More importantly, it gave them confidence – not only on the field, but beyond it.

Over time, their interests diverged.

Tianyou gravitated toward sports that were faster and more physical. Tianbao found himself drawn to endurance.

In 2019, Tianbao completed his first marathon in 5 hours and 35 minutes. Last year, he finished in 3 hours and 46 minutes, placing him among the stronger amateur runners in his category.

Training gradually became part of the structure of his weeks. Riverside paths, stadium tracks, and loops through city parks formed a map he knew through repetition rather than sight.

Running also introduced him to a community beyond the world he had grown up in.

Some members of his running group had known him since his earliest races. Together, they set informal goals, shaving minutes from his marathon time year after year. He met them.

When he set a new personal best last year, the celebration around him was louder than his own reaction.

"Helping a friend achieve something important can be meaningful in itself," one running partner said.

Tianbao sees it differently.

"You still have to do it yourself," he said. "But when people are there with you, you start believing more things are possible. Running, trail races, other sports – you start thinking maybe you can try them, too."

A year ago, the brothers stepped into another unfamiliar environment: a commercial gym.

China is home to more than 17 million people with visual impairments. For many of them, entering a gym remains difficult. Equipment is rarely designed with blind users in mind, and coaches experienced in adaptive training are still relatively uncommon.

China Sports Lottery partnered with a gym in Shanghai to create a training area more accessible to visually impaired users and brought in a professional coach to work with the brothers.

The first sessions were slow. Every machine had to be understood through touch. Every movement had to be repeated until it became familiar.

"Every sport is a new experience," Tianyou said. "A new way of learning something."

Not long afterward, a boxing club invited the brothers to try something else.

The invitation was accepted almost immediately.

New activities seem to have a way of finding them.

"People might think our interests are quite limited," Tianyou observed. "But these things bring us a lot of happiness. Life is really made up of small things. I just hope there can be a little more hope and a little more fun in it."

If sport gave the brothers confidence and introduced them to communities beyond their immediate circle, coffee expanded those possibilities in a different direction.

After graduating, they faced a reality familiar to many visually impaired people in China. While employment opportunities have expanded in recent years, many blind job seekers still find themselves concentrated in a limited number of professions, particularly massage therapy.

The brothers were looking for something different.

That opportunity arrived through Hinichijou, better known to most Shanghai residents as Bear Paw Café.

Founded in 2020, the café became known for a simple but memorable gesture. Customers ordered through a small opening in a wall, and a furry bear paw emerged to hand over their coffee – a playful symbol of warmth and connection. Originally created to provide employment opportunities for people with hearing impairments, the project quickly attracted public attention.

Its founders soon began asking a different question. If deaf baristas could work behind the counter, could blind baristas do the same?

In 2022, the answer took shape in a small café at CR Times Square in Pudong.

The space measured less than 5 square meters. Tianbao became the store manager, while Tianyou joined the operation.

Inside, almost everything was redesigned.

Different materials marked different work areas. Stainless steel indicated one station, wood another, rubber still another. Coffee machines were fitted with tactile markers, allowing buttons to be identified by shape rather than sight.

"I know where everything is," Tianbao noted. "Even when it gets busy, I don't get confused."

The familiarity did not come quickly. Every task had to be learned through repetition, finding equipment, remembering layouts, building routines until movements became instinctive.

What began as a job gradually became something larger.

For the brothers, the café represented a different kind of future, one that expanded the boundaries of what they had imagined possible for themselves.

In late 2024, Bear Paw Café opened a dark-experience space at HKRI Taikoo Hui, operated by six visually impaired partners, including the brothers.

The project represented another shift. For much of their lives, they had adapted themselves to environments designed by others. Here, they were helping design the environment itself.

Inside, visitors navigate near-total darkness with the help of guides. The experience invites sighted customers to rely on touch, sound, and memory rather than vision.

For Tianyou, the idea felt personal.

"Because we've been blind since birth, we don't really think in pictures," he said. "What we know comes from what we can touch, hear, and experience."

The concept resonated. Corporate groups began booking visits, creating a stable source of revenue for the café. Brands including Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Tiffany have brought teams through the experience.

Yet the brothers remain most interested in something simpler.

Every day, they greet customers, chat with visitors, and share stories. They have also learned to livestream, offering glimpses of their daily routines while drawing new customers to the café.

"The biggest challenge is still dealing with different people and different situations," Tianyou explained. "We hope people can just sit down, have a coffee, and talk to us normally."

Today, the brothers still spend nearly three hours each day commuting between home and work.

Over time, they have developed their own way of reading the city.

They can often distinguish buses by the sound of their engines and doors. On the subway, they use sound and spatial cues to judge whether seats are available. Walking through unfamiliar areas, they rely on fixed reference points: a wall, a railing, even the direction of airflow from a building entrance.

Technology has helped. Screen-reading software allows them to navigate smartphones independently. But the physical environment remains less predictable. Tactile paving is sometimes blocked. Public spaces are not always designed with visually impaired users in mind.

Their experience reflects a broader reality. Shanghai has roughly 600,000 registered residents with disabilities. The city has spent decades expanding accessibility in public transportation and urban infrastructure, becoming one of the first in China to establish local regulations governing barrier-free environments. Yet much of daily life still depends on individual adaptation.

The brothers understand this well.

Most days, they simply keep moving.

There is another shift to work, another race to train for, another activity to try.

At the end of the day, they often make the long trip home together.

"Having my brother with me makes things easier," Tianbao said.

He paused.

Then he laughed.

"We just keep going."