Over the 18 years since its establishment, the institution has expanded from a small classroom with just three teachers and five children to a centre with 54 teachers capable of helping more than 300 children each year.
Teachers take the children to farms, theatres and playgrounds, allowing them to try their hand at activities such as making soybean milk, picking fruit, feeding animals and riding horses.
Sun still remembers the despair she saw in the eyes of parents of autistic children back in the 2000s, when there were few specialized institutions to help them. Having trained as an educator, she brought two other teachers to Beijing to study before they established the first educational centre for children with autism in Shenyang.