Hands-on Celebrity Charity Supporters

By staff reporter JIAO FENG

POP diva Faye Wong and her husband, actor Li Yapeng, won top honors last May 19 at the China Charity Celebrity Gala in Beijing. Kung Fu star Jet Li came a close second, with superstar actor and director Jackie Chan bringing up the rear in third place. Rather than donations, the awards acknowledged these big names’ proactive dedication to good causes and use of their celebrity status to polarize public attention. Gala organizers remarked that the magnitude of everyday people these individuals draw into and acquaint with charitable culture outweighs by far the value of their personal donations.

Although celebrity charity is relatively new to China it has already moved on from stars acting as mere figureheads. They now take concrete measures towards sustainable charity development. Examples include Faye Wong and Li Yapeng’s establishment in 2006 of the Smile Angel Foundation, and Jet Li’s setting up of the One Foundation in 2011. Tibetan singer-songwriter Han Hong organized a group of volunteers to drum up donations for earthquake rescue, and Huang Xiaoming, Yang Zi and Huang Shengyi headed the Sunshine Movement to fund cataract operations for senior citizens. Actress Yang Tongshu, meanwhile, launched the Sheyu Loving Foundation for mothers and infant health, and actor Pu Cunxin runs a foundation for AIDS families.

Jackie Chan with students at a school in Luannan County, Hebei Province, which is funded by his Dragon’s Heart charity initiative, on October 27, 2009.

In the Name of Our Daughter

Faye Wong and Li Yapeng have put into practice the Chinese saying that one should love all children and honor all elders as one’s own.

The day in 2006 their daughter Li Yan was born, Li Yapeng wrote in his diary, “God has given you a cleft palate, and I will make it your glory.” He and Wong have indeed made Li Yan a guardian angel of children born with this infirmity.

The idea to help other children similarly afflicted came to Li Yapeng as he had a smoke in the hospital grounds during his daughter’s first corrective surgery. Soon after he contacted the China Red Cross Society and donated RMB one million as start-up capital. In November of 2006, the Smile Angel Foundation was established. Its purpose is to improve the health and living conditions of such children. By the end of 2012, the foundation had enabled 8,519 impoverished children with cleft palates to undergo corrective surgery.

The Smile Angel Foundation organizes fund-raising charity banquets and art auctions, and also works with local hospitals to help poverty-stricken families. During the six years since its establishment, Li Yapeng has led a medical team to Sichuan, Xin-jiang, Tibet, Guizhou, Inner Mongolia, and Heilong-jiang. Along the way the team has performed free operations on more than 300 children living in remote areas.

Li Yapeng confesses that his motives for setting up the foundation were selfish, seeing it as a beneficial therapeutic milieu for his daughter. But after six years his concern has expanded to all the children it helps.

In May 2012, the Smile Angel Hospital – the first private non-profit children’s comprehensive hospital – opened. Li Yapeng promised that hospital revenues would be plowed back into its development and also used as medical aid to poor families.

“Charity is now my profession and responsibility. It brings me the satisfaction of a broadened vision that puts my personal joys and sorrows into perspective. In other words, it has introduced me to the happiness that sharing brings,” Li Yapeng said.