Ice bucket challenge comes to China – with an equine twist

The ice bucket challenge to raise funds for ALS research is now a hit in China. Participants have added Chinese characteristics to the craze. 

|
AP
Former NBA star Yao Ming, center right, takes the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge at a school in Beijing, China, on Aug. 23, 2014.

What is an environmentally responsible entertainer to do when he is given the ice bucket challenge in a country where water resources are scarce?

Douse himself in freezing horse urine.

The ice bucket challenge, which is a way of raising awareness of ALS and money for research, is now sweeping China. But as star DJ Yang Yue showed, the campaign has taken on distinctly Chinese characteristics.

The craze began in China two weeks ago when Liu Zuohu, the founder of a smartphone company, poured icy water over himself. Other high-tech entrepreneurs such as Terry Gou (whose Foxconn company makes most of Apple’s iPhones) and Robin Li (founder of Baidu, China's dominant search engine) were quick to follow the fad.

The campaign has also taken a curiously institutional turn. In other countries, individuals challenge other individuals to take the challenge and/or donate funds. Here, the state-run China Central Television network used its social media account to challenge the Ministry of Civil Affairs. It is not clear if anybody in either of these organizations actually got wet.

Journalists from the official Xinhua news agency did though, and they also had the cheek to challenge the Ministry of Public Security, which runs the police force. The cops weren’t having any of it: They announced on their microblog account that they “really had no time to pour ice buckets over ourselves and show our bodies” but swore they had donated to the cause.

The Chinese charity that is collecting money from the campaign, the China Dolls Center for Rare Disorders, said Sunday that it had raised $1.3 million in the past couple of weeks. Last year it raised just $77,000 in August.

“I hope that when the “ice bucket fever” passes, that attention will not fade,” said Wang Yi’ou, the founder of China Dolls. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Ice bucket challenge comes to China – with an equine twist
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2014/0902/Ice-bucket-challenge-comes-to-China-with-an-equine-twist
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe