The 11th annual Chi Fan for Charity (CFFC) will be held on November 9 this year, and table booking is now open. With more than 50 restaurants in Beijing offering gourmet meals, table hosts can have wonderful gatherings with a variety of options, and what better way to end the evening than knowing that after all the good times (don’t forget the after-party at Chao), all proceeds go to a worthy cause.
This year’s funds recipient is Bethel, a training center for visually impaired children. Many young children with such disabilities in China are not able to access a proper education, often due to financial hardship, and in more extreme cases, abandoned by their birth parents. Bethel accepts them and shows their families that with love, support and hard work, children with visual impairments can have equal access to education.
Image via Chi Fan for Charity
To raise more awareness to this cause, CFFC organized a blind tasting event earlier this month at Hulu. Li Shuang, a blind graduate of Xinjiang Medical University who has been teaching at Bethel for 10 years, joined 10 diners with tips on dining without sight and stories of her travels around the world. She is a living testament that with proper education, visually impaired people can thrive and live life to the fullest. After visiting 40 countries on five continents, she hopes to continue traveling and share those experiences with more people.
Having to eat blindfolded was definitely a challenge. Hulu developed a special four-course menu for the occasion, featuring bite-sized morsels that were supposedly easy to pick up. The world seems overwhelming when you can’t see: the swish of air from people walking by, the sudden clink of a bowl being put in front of you and being distracted with the need to identify every noise that catches your ears.
Image via Uni You for Chi Fan for Charity
Even the simple act of picking up a spoon in front of you raised anxiety. Hulu’s headwaiter kindly described the dishes and their location in advance, including the utensils – the mini cauliflower soup is on your left, the butter bread on your right and the spoon is in the middle. Sounds easy enough, right? Yet tentative hands roamed the table before finding the edge of the serving plate, grasping the description like a lifeline.
Images via Uni You for Chi Fan for Charity
After the anxious meal, peeling the blindfold away brought such relief (blinding light never looked so good), but some people live with the struggle. What we experienced was a mere smidgen of their lives. How many visually impaired people are afforded the luxury of having their meals explained to them? How many have kind souls by their side directing utensils?
The estimated RMB400,000 to be raised through the event will go towards two specific initiatives: subsidizing education of 11 students from low-income families for a full academic year, who would otherwise be unable to attend Bethel’s programs which teach Braille, daily living skills and mobility; and creating four separate family trainings aimed to reach 200 families in Fangshan, which counsel groups of families on how to care for their blind children.
For more information about Chi Fan for Charity, follow their WeChat account: ChiFanForCharity_BJ. To host a table, click here.
[Top image via Chi Fan for Charity]
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