Art auction to support people in remote regions
- By Pang Li
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E-mail China.org.cn, November 23, 2012
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Three paintings are on display at a charity auction held at the National Aquatics Center in Beijing on Thursday. [Pang Li / China.org.cn] |
Eleven art works, including photos, paintings and sculptures, went under the hammer in an auction at the National Aquatics Center or the Water Cube in Beijing on Thursday night, with all the proceeds going to a charity project aimed at making electricity available to low-income residents in remote areas.
The auction, organized by the China Environmental Protection Foundation (CEPF) and endorsed by several actors and singers, grossed around 1.1 million yuan (US$176,500). Proceeds will go directly to the Clean Development Fund managed by CEPF to subsidize a project that makes solar power available to nomads and farmers living in remote areas across Tibet, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Gansu, Yunnan and Guizhou, among others. Due to their lifestyles as well as poor infrastructure, a large number of people in those areas cannot get access to electricity, which for most people is something they take for granted.
In a blue-lit hall inside the Water Cube, about five hundred guests-including many entrepreneurs- showed considerable enthusiasm for the art items on auction. When the bidding for the first item kicked off, a panoramic photograph by Cui Xiuwen, one company manager eliminated his competition in the first call by simply doubling the starting price. The photo was sold for 200,000 yuan (US$32,100), making it the highest-selling feature of the night. The manager said that he wanted to have the donated proceeds used for building a solar powered school in Qinghai Province.
Li Wei, secretary general of the CEPF, said that the three-year-running project has already spent 8 million yuan (US$1.3 million) in charity funds on building solar power stations and installing solar powered lights in the Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve which contains the headwaters of the Yangtze River, the Yellow River and the Lancang River in Qinghai Province, benefiting more than 17,000 residents.
He said that the electricity has brought dramatic changes to the locals, quoting a local young child as saying, "The electricity is our eyes, which enables us to see future and hope, and a farther and bigger world." He said that he believes that the project will in the long run certainly benefit generations to come.
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