In a modest room in the Wuchang district of Wuhan, Hubei province, time seems to move at its own gentle rhythm. Fingers glide quietly across yellowed pages, while a young university student reads aloud, patiently tracing formulas and diagrams. This is where Zhou Shun studies — a classroom, a library, and a testament to perseverance, all contained within a few square meters.

Zhou lost his sight in childhood, initially thought to be caused by congenital retinal atrophy but later diagnosed as retinitis pigmentosa, a group of inherited rare retinal disorders that lead to progressive vision loss. Rather than turning away from science, he learned to approach it by other means — through sound, logic, and imagination. With the sustained help of volunteers from Wuhan University, he has spent more than three decades studying advanced mathematics and physics, gradually building what he calls a "universe of knowledge" within his mind.

In December last year, Zhou published his third book, Mathematics in Physics, an expanded version of an original edition released in 2017.

In the book's preface, Zhou Bin, an associate professor specializing in field theory and general relativity at Beijing Normal University, noted the work's unusually broad scope. "It ranges from foundational subjects essential to undergraduate physics majors — such as calculus and linear algebra — to far more advanced topics including spectral theory on infinite-dimensional vector spaces and tensor analysis," he wrote, adding that the book would not be easy reading for the average master's student without formal training in mathematics.

Those who've spent time with Zhou Shun speak less of difficulty than of the habits of his mind.

"I often feel that what the blackboard is for us, darkness is for him — a surface on which to write, a space onto which equations, formulas and conjectures are projected by a mind sharpened as keenly as our pens," said Chai Chengye, a third-year undergraduate in the School of Physics and Technology at Wuhan University, who began reading for Zhou in 2023, two months after he entered the university.

Overcoming adversity

He was once bathed in light. Before the age of 6, Zhou was a joyful, ordinary child. Then illness struck. One of his last clear memories of sight is of his father teaching him Chinese characters, using an ink brush on cardboard so the strokes would be large enough for him to see. The deterioration was swift, and by middle school he could no longer walk to school on his own.

"That was when my father began to take my hand and guide it along the strokes of the characters I needed to learn. He read to me as well, for one or two hours every day," recalled Zhou, now 54.

Some things, however, were much harder — solid geometry, for instance.

"My father would guide my hand to trace planar projections on the desk, or even on my own leg. But without a visual crutch, how do you transform a perspective drawing into a three-dimensional object? In the end, there is no one to rely on but your own imagination. You turn it over in your mind again and again, until the diagram begins to move, to rotate, to take shape — almost like a computer rendering. That is still how I work today: turning an idea over and over until light seeps through a crack, and suddenly — everything clicks."

"But I'm not always successful," he added.

To enter high school, Zhou sat the same examinations as his peers, with only one accommodation: a teacher sat beside him throughout, reading the test papers aloud and recording his answers. His results were strong enough to qualify him for a top-ranked public high school, but he chose to attend an ordinary one instead.

"During high school, I always sat in the front row. The teachers — especially my math and physics teachers — would voice everything they wrote on the blackboard. They were always mindful," Zhou recalled.

He was not permitted to sit the college entrance examinations, as no special provisions were available for him. Instead, at 18, he enrolled in a vocational school to study massage, which in China had long been the default occupation for the blind.

"Up to that point, I had lived among the ordinary and had never thought of myself as 'special' in a burdensome sense," Zhou said. "Being in that school, surrounded by people who could not see, was like hitting a wall."

The experience was compounded by the pain of being unable to attend college — a future his father, who died in 1997 at the age of 65, had always believed he deserved.

"I did become a masseur, and was one for 32 years, until my retirement from a factory hospital in 2024," said Zhou. "But physics and math — my two favorite subjects — found me only two years after I left vocational school in 1992."

At the time, Zhou hired university students to read physics and mathematics books to him, subsisting on a meager monthly stipend of 100 yuan ($14.46).

His resolve was met with unexpected generosity in 1995, when one of the students he had hired introduced him to Mao Youdong, a physics student at Wuhan University.

"Not only did he offer to read for me without pay, but he also shared my story with his classmates and teachers," Zhou recalled.

4,300 helpers

University administrators arranged for physics lecturers to wear microphones during class, recording their lessons and delivering the cassette tapes to Zhou.

A year later, a more structured system took shape: students from the School of Physics and Technology began reading for Zhou on a daily basis for no fewer than three hours each day. Over the past few years, this has been carried out online during the week and in person on weekends.

Over the past three decades, some 4,300 students have taken part in this long-running endeavor. As the effort expanded to include the School of Mathematics and Statistics and the School of Remote Sensing and Information Engineering, Zhou's relentless pursuit of knowledge weaved together the shared memories of generations of alumni.

The earliest helpers were Zhou's peers; those who come today belong to a different generation altogether. They call him "Uncle Shun", and in their sessions with him, learning moves in both directions.

"Sometimes I haven't even finished reading a paragraph before he is already explaining the ideas behind it," said Xing Lu, a volunteer and classmate of Chai's in the school of physics. "He asks questions, cross-checks details — you can feel how deeply he thinks."

Xing joined the project out of a desire to meet a near-legendary figure long spoken of among students. In the past semester alone, more than 90 students from her school read for him.

"What I discovered," Xing said, "is that whatever Uncle Shun may have lost in sight, he has more than made up for with a curiosity that has no obvious endpoint."

During their weekly sessions, Xing reads to Zhou from physics texts written in English, among which is Mathematical Physics: A Modern Introduction to Its Foundations by Sadri Hassani.

"To be honest, I don't always understand what I'm reading," Xing said. "I pronounce each word as best I can from its spelling. But he understands it. He must have had these passages read to him many times before."

At times, Xing was asked to read in parallel from an English text and a Chinese book covering the same subjects. When additional references were needed, Zhou would direct her to the exact passage — sometimes even the precise page.

"It isn't realistic to expect every good physics book to have a Chinese translation," Zhou said. "When I encounter an unfamiliar word, I ask my reader to pronounce it and spell it out. The spelling gives me a sense of the word, but more often I remember how it sounds. The equations and formulas help anchor its meaning."

'Mathematical beauty'

Where vision falls away, memory, structure, and persistence take over — quietly reassembling the world, one idea at a time. It is a world governed by physical truth — one that reveals itself most clearly through what Zhou, like many before him, understands as mathematical beauty.

Zhou considers himself fortunate to have glimpsed "the tip of the iceberg of that beauty".

"Mathematics is the language of nature, and physics its poetry," he reflected. "Their relationship is the great romance at the heart of theoretical physics: a testament to how the human mind's most abstract constructions can illuminate the deepest secrets of the cosmos."

One figure he often has in mind is physicist Albert Einstein, who immersed himself deeply in advanced mathematics to carry his ideas forward.

"At my best, I'm what Einstein called a lighthouse keeper," Zhou said, adding that a full understanding of Einstein's general theory of relativity still lies far beyond his reach. Einstein suggested that the solitary life of a lighthouse keeper would be an ideal job to allow a young theoretical physicist to think deeply.

Yet for Xing and others, Zhou is the lighthouse itself: fixed, enduring and illuminating the path ahead.

"Passion sustained through learning, dignity of a life devoted to understanding — if there are lessons more important than these, let me know," Xing said.

"In fact, his interests reach far beyond mathematics and physics. He loves history and music, and when he talks with us about photography, he does so with the same excitement as someone who can see."

In 2014, a former reader took Zhou and his wife on a journey across western China, traveling through Qinghai province and all the way to the foot of Mount Qomolangma on the Tibetan Plateau. "The car bounced along gravel roads so badly that our backsides ached. We circled Qinghai Lake, and I dipped my hand into its water," said Zhou.

What left the deepest impression, however, was their visit to the Jinyintan Grassland in Qinghai, the site of China's first nuclear weapons research and development base, where Deng Jiaxian, one of the country's leading theoretical physicists and its foremost nuclear weapons scientist, worked in extremely harsh conditions in the 1950s and 60s.

"Sometimes at night, Deng would lie awake, thinking through complex problems in complete darkness. I suppose that's how I felt as well — groping my way out of uncertainty, trusting thought to be its own light."

"The process is solitary," he said, "like knocking on a door, patiently, until it opens."

Describing himself as "gentle but obstinate — just like my father", Zhou lives with his wife and his 88-year-old mother, both of whom help him locate materials, particularly during the writing of his book, a project he began in 2013.

"It took me four years to complete the original edition of Mathematics in Physics," Zhou said. "I then began revising and expanding it into a three-volume work. The first volume was published in 2023, followed by the second late last year. I am now working toward completing the final volume."

In preparing the books, Zhou dictated while student volunteers typed everything down. They would then read the text back to him, allowing him to check for accuracy. "I can use a keyboard but not a mouse, which creates real difficulties," he said. "Without their help, I could never have written these books."

Asked why he would want to do this, Zhou said, "I just hope others can walk a smoother path than I did."