KUNMING, June 2 (Xinhua) -- On every Children's Day in the past eight years, Wang Zhihan always received a shower of applause from the audience after performing at the show held by her school.

Standing on a stage for the curtain call, she would make a bow even though she never heard the clapping.

"Dancing cheers me up," Wang says, using sign language.

Born deaf and mute, Wang rarely feels sorry for herself. Instead, she loves dancing and playing basketball, and plays mobile phone games with friends on weekends.

Wang is a third grader in a local special education school for the blind and mute in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province. As one of the leading dancers in the school's dance troupe, She calls her fellow schoolmates for training every morning at 6:30 a.m.

Wang has not noticed her difference from others until she turned six, when she went to Kunming to attend kindergarten from her hometown in neighboring Sichuan Province.

"All I felt was that my world was so quiet," she explained with her hands.

Wang's teacher, Li Zhirong, recalled that the little girl always hid herself and avoided conversations with her classmates when she came to school nine years ago. "She just did not know how to make a sign."

To let Wang open up, Li encouraged her to join the school's dance troupe.

"They can't hear the music and feel the rhythm, and their efforts are unimaginable to ordinary people," he said.

Wang soon fell in love with dancing and spent much of her spare time practicing. Before long, she became a star in the troupe and was chosen from nearly 100 as one of the leading dancers of the "Thousand-handed Goddess of Mercy," a dance performed by 21 mute and deaf dancers at the annual Spring Festival Gala in 2005.

After six years of practicing the dance, Wang and her fellow dancers brought the dance onto the stage at the opening ceremony of the 11th Yunnan Paralympic Games last September with perfect rhythm and coordination.

The audience turned up their thumbs for the children, who then hugged each other backstage.

"Dancing completely changed me," Wang says in sign language.

Wang is now preparing for the annual senior high school entrance exam in September, chasing her dream to go to college.

The test will either send her into a high school class for the preparation for college entrance exam, or leave her to vocational education.

"I want to take the college entrance exam and become a real star in college," Wang said. She has replanned her time for dancing and learning, and devoted more to the latter without giving up dancing.

There are some 20 colleges in China that enroll students like Wang, and the entrance exams are usually organized in March, instead of June for the national ones.

Wang said she would like to choose colleges in Beijing or the northeastern city of Changchun to see big cities and snow in the north.