The national policy in deaf education in Mainland China primarily focuses on oral/aural instruction and hearing rehabilitation. The curriculum in primary grades is specifically structured on speech and hearing skills for language development. But there is little evidence that documents what early literacy instruction looks like or how teachers conduct the teaching of reading and writing in classrooms with Chinese deaf children. By analyzing videotapes from the first and second grade classrooms, we describe how reading and writing are taught to deaf children in China. The key findings are that the primary grade literacy instruction (1) shares features of Gradual Release of Responsibility model with a focus on speech and hearing skills; (2) uses multimodal strategies and pedagogical tools such as lip-reading, Pinyin phonetic symbols, Pinyin Finger Spelling, Chinese Sign Language (CSL), and Signed Chinese (SC). Moreover, the curriculum reflects low expectations for deaf students as it lacks the academic content provided to their hearing peers. We conclude with implications for literacy instruction in deaf education, and suggest a future research agenda.