On a bright, chilly, winter's day, there is perhaps no lovelier view on Hong Kong island than the one which generously spreads itself in front of the large building at 131 Pokfulam Road. This is one of life's more notable ironies, because the children playing outside the entrance on such a vivid morning do not know the sea is glittering and the sky is an unusually clear blue. 'They can feel it is very spacious,' says Piers Kuan, while a child pats him to attract his attention. 'And we try to tell them what it is like so it is still meaningful to them.' The Ebenezer School and Home for the Visually Impaired is currently the only educational institute for blind children in Hong Kong. Kuan is one of its teachers. In 1897, a missionary called Martha Postler from the Hildesheimer Blindenmission in Germany came to Hong Kong to bring care - and Christianity - to the blind. Her first charges were four girls. She called the school she set up Ebenezer, which means 'Stone of Help', and by 1913 an imposing edifice on the current Pokfulam site had been built.
Apart from a brief period during the 1920s, and for the duration of World War II, the school has been operating from the same beautiful location since.
It is still run on Christian principles, but its pupils don't have to be believers ('although we hope so', muses Kuan). There are about 130 students, ranging from kindergarten to Form Three. Roughly half are defined as 'functionally blind', which means they cannot see anything, although a few borderline cases may be able to distinguish a face close up; the rest have varying degrees of visual impairment. Some have never been able to see. Others had sight for their first few years, which gradually dwindled as a result of disease.
If you are depressed by the thought of the Ebenezer School, with its strangely Dickensian name and its sightless children, and if you are already turning the page because this is really too sad a story to read on a Sunday morning, the people involved with the school understand how you feel. But they'd also prefer it if you didn't look at these photographs with tears of pity clouding the vision in your own eyes.
'I started with a misconception,' admits Dr Simon Leung, the school principal. 'I originally majored in linguistics, and what triggered my interest was a chance to tutor a blind girl. I thought, 'Blind people are very good at languages and music, and there are enough English teachers in Hong Kong, I'll work with blind people.' ' He laughs, amused at his old assumptions. 'Blind people can be lousy at music ... Now, I think all children are the same. People say to us, 'Oh, you must be very loving, very patient.' Maybe we are, but I think all teachers should be loving and patient. The point is to treat disabled people like everyone else - in fact, I help them less. An orientation teacher has to let them try everything, even if they get hurt. That's the process. Otherwise they won't learn to be independent.' Independence is what every blind person aspires to, which is why Orientation and Mobility teachers such as Piers Kuan are so important. The children learn to negotiate their own surroundings, then they move into the world beyond Ebenezer. Hong Kong doesn't have guide-dogs - because the environment is too built-up for animals which should be allowed to run free at the end of a disciplined day as someone's eyes - so the blind must take public transport and walk through the streets alone. The idea is that at least some of the students will be able to move, as educated equals, into mainstream schools by the time they're 15. About 40 such pupils now travel daily to 20 ordinary schools, returning to Ebenezer to board.
About 60 per cent of the children board. If you went to visit the Ebenezer School - they're keen on visitors, encouraging in particular children from other schools to go, and widen everyone's experience - the first thing you might think is it's the cleanest establishment you've ever seen in Hong Kong. The children feel their way everywhere, and if the school weren't so pristine their hands would be black by the end of the day. And once a child has memorised a route, up the stairs, along a corridor and into a classroom, it can't be blocked by needless clutter.