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在线翻译:
szdaily -> Culture -> 
TEDx speakers inspire audience with innovative ideas
    2017-04-20  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

    Zhang Qian

    zhqcindy@163.com

    WHAT can 18 minutes do? Seven Shenzhen speakers from various backgrounds each took 18 minutes to share their observations and thoughts about technology, arts, education, architecture, philanthropy and sailing at a TEDx talk in Nanshan District on Sunday.

    Themed “Reconnect,” the organizing committee of the annual conference, TEDxFutian, aimed to inspire the Shenzhen audience with innovative perspectives to help them think outside of the box and gain a new perspective.

    For instance, philanthropy was one of the topics and according to the city’s civil affairs department, in recent years an increasing number of social organizations and charity groups have been established in Shenzhen.

    People tend to think that doing charity is giving money to show their love and sympathy. But a father of a mentally handicapped teenager, Cao Jun, shared his story of solving charity funding problems with his commercial insight at Sunday’s talk.

    In his talk, Cao said that, like many parents of mentally handicapped children, also known as “Xihaner,” he suffered great pain when being told that his son would never be able to live independently like other children.

    Cao started his talk by sharing his fear that his son would be alone and helpless when Cao and his wife pass away.

    “I did not want to drink much water before going to bed during that time for the fear of waking up in the middle of the night and thinking about my son. That was too much pain for me.” After years of thinking and exploring, Cao eventually decided to create a center where Xihaner could live and help each other, but the center needed a source of income to maintain itself. Having worked in the commercial sector for many years, Cao thought of creating a business to solve the income problem.

    So he established a carwash in Shenzhen in 2015 where all of the staff were mentally handicapped teenagers or adults. By washing cars collaboratively, the staff earned their income as well as respect from customers.

    The staff at the carwash have washed more than 20,000 cars as of April 10 this year and one of the mentally handicapped staff even had his wedding on the same day as the TEDx talk, showing how the job had indeed helped them to reconnect with society.

    “No one will give you money out of sympathy forever, so you need to earn your own dignity by working,” said Cao during the talk, which won fervent cheers and applause from the audience attending the conference.

    After the talk, Cao’s project attracted Didi Chuxing’s attention and the company announced that it would think of ways to cooperate with Cao and his carwash.

    An audience member named Wang Guoli told Shenzhen Daily that she was truly touched by Cao’s talk because she never thought that there were other ways to do charity in a more sustainable way. Wang has a cousin who is a mentally handicapped adult without a job, and she hopes that her cousin can join the carwash team and live a more independent and respected life.

    Another speaker was Zhu Jingxiang, a famous architect in China and an associate professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

    Zhu’s speech brought the audience’s attention to several design projects that he had participated in to build light, easy, flat and inclusive structures in special places such as mountainous areas, slums, disaster zones, wetlands and so forth.

    In particular, Zhu shared a classroom that they had built for leftover children in impoverished areas in China. “We wanted to build a classroom that would naturally attract the students to study because they feel comfortable and can have fun in the room, rather than the same desperate feelings they have in their empty homes,” said Zhu.

    The classroom Zhu introduced was built so that the walls and floors were filled with squares where the kids could squat, sit and play. This design also opened up the classroom by more efficiently allocating space.

    “In such an easy yet unexpected way, space can be used totally different from the way people would normally think. Allowing the space to function to reconnect people with their real lives,” said Zhu.

    The speeches didn’t stop there though and the other speakers did equally as wonderful talks. Ge Qingfei, an educator, shared a method that can help children to self-educate themselves systematically. Peng Zhiyu, the chief product officer at BGI, took the audience through the development of genetics and emphasized that genetic studies will eventually connect people to their “second lives.”

    A literature scholar from Taiwan, Zhao Xiaoxuan, shared her perspective on understanding art pieces that have skyrocketing auction values yet remain obscure and hard to understand for most people.

    The annual conference was organized by a group of volunteers from all walks of life in Shenzhen. TEDxFutian was the first Shenzhen TEDx group to be authorized by TED headquarters.

 

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