China News Service, Beijing, February 28th. Title: Cover the light and illuminate the heart-the adventure of a "dark restaurant"
Author Li Hanxue
When you sit inattentively at the dining table again, pick up the dishes and pick out food while looking at the screen of your phone or tablet, can you imagine how to proceed if you suddenly lose all the light and eat as usual?
In the "dark restaurant" in Xidan, Beijing, customers will experience such a dining environment—not the romantic and ambiguous darkness, but the darkness that mimics the vision of the blind.
Before eating, you must store all light-emitting items such as mobile phones, and then put your hands on the shoulders of the visually impaired waiters to receive the "guide for the blind" service.
Passing through the curtain of the low-light adaptation zone, many customers really understand for the first time in the dark dining area that "you can't see your fingers", and then they can't take a big step.
After following the instructions of the waiter and sitting down by touching the edge of the table like asking for help, you can start exploring "dining in the dark".
The first step is to touch your own tableware.
"After some customers came out, they wanted to draw a picture of what they had eaten." The owner Yu Shuang shared with a reporter from China News Agency. Many guests left a message, "After a meal, I know that seeing is happiness."
Yu Shuang was originally a surgeon.
In 1999, she suddenly suffered a retinal detachment in one eye, but fortunately, she recovered her vision after treatment.
But the fear and inconvenience of that period had a deep impact on her, and she hoped to do something for the visually impaired.
In 2010, by chance, she opened this "dark restaurant".
Yu Shuang said that the original intention of the "Dark Restaurant" was to allow the visually impaired to work in an equal rights environment.
In the dark, people with sound vision are helpless and uncomfortable, but people with visual impairments are “familiar with the road”.
These people who often need help from others can help others here.
So far, more than 80 blind and low-vision people have worked here.
Because it emphasizes "equal rights" rather than "charity", the restaurant does not take the initiative to inform guests that employees have physical disabilities.
Every time a customer wondered why the waiters could walk so fast in the darkness, Yu Shuang smiled and answered that the clerk has a special function, so it is particularly difficult to recruit.
The restaurant has a few thick guestbooks, which record the various dining experiences of the guests.
Someone wrote that they stole steaks at the same table, and some mothers encouraged their children not to be afraid...More specifically, it was the experience of customers who also had physical disabilities.
A visually impaired boy once brought his mother to the restaurant.
After the meal, the young man’s mother told Yu Shuang that she was shocked. Her son had not been seen for more than 30 years, but she had never thought of turning off all the lights at home and having a meal.
"With you, I understand the true taste of my son's life."
There was also a girl with hearing impairment who jumped up with excitement after walking out of the dark area because she suddenly felt that having eyesight is so great.
The visually impaired employees who provide services feel that they are very lucky to be able to hear beautiful music.
For each guest, dining in the dark is a different adventure.
And those employees with special lives have also experienced their life adventures here.
The tall, handsome, and freely shuttled boy in the restaurant is the blind pianist of the restaurant-Zhou Haoyu.
Hao Yu graduated from the School of Special Education of Beijing Union University, where he studied piano tuning and vocal music.
He said that many people assume that blind people can only do blind massage, but his dream is to become a bel canto singer.
When Hao Yu played the piano, she often attracted a lot of girls to "watch on".
But Yu Shuang said that when Hao Yu came to apply for the job, his best instrument was not the piano, but the erhu, which was not suitable for the atmosphere of the restaurant.
In order to stay in the restaurant, Hao Yu practiced the piano again, which she only learned many years later.
With the support of the restaurant and many enthusiastic guests, Haoyu is now still doing online live broadcast, and has taken in a few vocal apprentices, and will also go out to perform and tune the piano.
As long as he is in the restaurant, he can hear his bright singing everywhere.
Since 2018, the restaurant has begun to accept employees with other physical disabilities.
That year, Chuanwang came to the restaurant as the chef.
This guy with thick eyebrows was severely injured by a high-pressure air pump when he was young, and was once the focus of social news.
Yu Shuang recalled that when Chuanwang first came, he was "like a sick cat", not to mention self-confidence, even having difficulty in normal communication.
The old head chef of the restaurant also resigned because of his damaged appearance.
But Yu Shuang resolutely left Chuanwang.
Now Chuan Wang is the chef in the store.
On Wang’s birthday not long ago, Yu Shuang was pleased to hear him say to everyone with pride: "Do whatever you want to eat and learn!"
Xin Yu, a thin and cautious short-haired girl in the restaurant, was introduced by Yu Shuang and found out that she was mentally disabled.
During the interview, she showed the reporter the cookies made by everyone.
During the epidemic, restaurant business was deserted, and sometimes there was no flow in a single day. Takeaway biscuits were a new emergency solution.
Xinyu couldn't bear to eat a piece by herself.
Yu Shuang was even more reluctant to close the restaurant.
She said that when she opened the restaurant 12 years ago, she only thought it was meaningful, but the meaning was still "empty".
The staff, guests and all the stories in the restaurant for 12 years have given the restaurant far-reaching significance.
"Therefore, we are doing our best to keep it." (End)