Hands-on Celebrity Charity Supporters

Faye Wong and Li Yapeng at the inauguration ceremony of the Beijing Smile Angel Children’s Hospital on May 27, 2012.

“I want to be the Forrest Gump of China”

Han Hong is regarded in entertainment circles as everyone’s big sister. Friends say, “Whenever you need anything, go to Han.”

Han Hong went to Wenchuan in Sichuan Province immediately after the 2008 earthquake. There she witnessed the warmth and concern of aid and rescue workers amid the devastation the quake had wrought. To do her part, she set up the volunteer Han Hong Love Rescue Movement with a personal donation of RMB 3.3 million. Volunteers collected another RMB 2.75 million, and organized substantial supplies of medicine, food and drinking water to disaster areas.

Han Hong was also on the spot with donations of cash and materials after the Yushu earthquake in Qinghai Province and the Zhouqu mudslide in Gansu Province in 2010, and the Yingjiang earthquake in Yunnan Province in 2011.

In 2011, Han Hong organized and funded with an RMB eight million donation a month-long medical aid tour of her native Tibet. There, she and her team of medics set up an ophthalmology center where locals could undergo surgery. Han and the team also established 140 health centers popularizing medical and health knowledge, and six schools for orphans and disabled children.

Han and her 100 volunteers went on another tour in Inner Mongolia in 2012. The ophthalmology center they established has since carried out 241 cataract operations. They also gave aid to 10 orphanages and donated 5,000 medical kits to local retirement homes. A flood hit Beijing while she and her team were on their way back to the capital. The day after their return, they went to the suburban areas to do what they could to help.

During the course of these events Han Hong’s rescue team has expanded from its original five members to more than 100 from all walks. It was Han Hong’s celebrity that brought them together and the trust she inspired that triggered donations. Han Hong confessed to media that she lacks financial savvy. The donations that arrived from around the country consequently brought her several sleepless nights. “People sent donations to me because they feel they know me, even though we have never met. As it’s my name they trust, I am responsible for making sure the donations reach their intended destination,” she explained.

Han Hong set up her foundation in 2012 with the aim of using donations efficiently, rationally and in an open, transparent environment. She hopes to influence and involve more people in charitable causes and restore their confidence in them. “I want to be the Forrest Gump of China, doing things with no thought of results or paybacks. This is my ideal,” Han Hong said. At one donation ceremony, Han Hong said, “Thank you to the kind people I have never met. Your kindness motivates me to carry on in this role. As long as you continue to trust me, we will keep going.”

At 8 a.m. last April 20 a 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Ya’an, Sichuan Province. Within 18 hours, Han Hong’s foundation had contacted hospitals, mobilized autos and organized donations. Within six days, they had collected RMB 20 million. Han arrived in the afternoon of April 26 with 100 generators and 30 mobile toilets, as well as food supplies. Her aim, as she said at the time, was “to distribute all the materials in person. I know the donors to my foundation expect me to pass their love on to people stricken by the disaster.”

Han Hong and her foundation plan to go to Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region this year to give medical aid to impoverished local residents. One of their aims is to set up a cornea donation platform.

Jackie Chan: Moved by Charity

Jackie Chan – probably China’s best-known movie star – has been involved in charitable activities for 30 years. In that time he has raised donations for the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). He also visited tsunami-hit Indonesia, and comforted landmine victims in Cambodia and AIDS patients in Vietnam. He helped with post-disaster reconstruction and the building of schools through donations to Wenchuan earthquake relief. Chan and other Hong Kong celebrities also gave benefit performances after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster. As UNICEF goodwill ambassador, he has spent all his free time on activities to help children, seniors and the needy. Along with film, charitable work is the most important thing in his life.

Aware of how much he missed by leaving education at a young age, in 1988 Chan set up the Jackie Chan Charitable Foundation. It provides help and scholarship to young people, and over the years has spread to many countries and regions. The benefits it brings to a broad scope of people include medical services, poverty relief and responses to natural disasters.

Chan is a staunch supporter of charitable causes. This is partly because the Red Cross helped him in his impoverished childhood, and also because he is moved by the gratitude of his beneficiaries.

Chan confessed that at the outset he took charity as a task and had little idea of what care for others entailed. This changed after a visit to an orphanage. He went there to distribute gifts that others had bought on his behalf, but had no idea what the packages contained. “I felt so ashamed when the children thanked me for their gifts. Seeing their smiles and hearing their stories, I was touched. I had done so little for them, but they were nevertheless so happy. I traveled around the world for charitable causes thinking I would move people, but it was they that moved me.”

Jackie Chan started an activity where if a child donates his or her pocket money, he would personally double the sum and also make a donation. All monies received go to his charitable program, Dragon’s Heart, to build primary schools in China. Among the many responses was that of a German child. He had done a Chinese painting and sent the 650 euros he sold it for to Chan. An American child shocked him with the letter he wrote to Chan in Chinese to say thank you for his good works. Such acts never fail to move Chan. “I am so glad that children around the world are doing charity work with me. They are the hope of future world peace.”

Chan shares these stories with others to draw them into charitable causes. He asks all guests at his birthday parties to bring cash gifts for his foundation. The Dragon’s Heart has spread to more than 30 countries and 50 cities. Chan’s endeavors have encouraged many of Hong Kong’s entertainment artists also to participate in charitable works, so setting an example to entertainment circles everywhere.