Hemophilia Home: Red Apple Choir

Hemophilia Home is a nonprofit established to improve the quality of life for patients with hemophilia by collecting knowledge on hemophilia and assisting poor patients. Hemophilia Home is in Beijing, China.

Rehearsal

To build a stage for the hemophilia patients to show their talents in 2014, we organized a choir, which had been a dream of the workers of Hemophilia Home. For all kinds of reasons as money or medicine shortage and performing opportunities, the dream had not been fulfilled until 2014.

In a activity hosted by Soong Ching Ling Foundation, we connected with the organization. The activity is an art festival for youth. Art groups who are invited on the show have to experience rounds of selection. Considering we are not professional art troupe. After we told the staff of Soong Ching Ling Foundation our actual situations, they decided to discuss in the meeting. We were waiting nervously.

Soony Ching Ling Foundation agreed our demands and promised to arrange our performances in priority, because they did not want our children to wait for a long time. With the news, we could not help jumping for joys. We were inspired to be accepted and confirmed the other public welfare organization. We would value the hard-earned performing opportunity.

On July 27, it was the first rehearsal of the choir. Children and their parents and our volunteers came to the site early. At the beginning, the children seemed shy and restrained. They were sitting silently and listened to the arrangement of the teacher. After a while, they became naughty and did what their like as falling behind the rhythm, looking around, missing the lyrics, playing hide-and-seek, etc. Some of parents gave instructions patiently and some of them criticized strictly. Some of the parents asked their children out and talked to them separately. Luckily, the voluntary teacher is professional and experienced. The chorus became harmonious.
 
Early in the morning, our 2 staff began to busy for all kinds of logistic chores for the performance. During the lunch time, the staff and volunteers discussed for every detail. When they got everything settle down, they were sweating all over. For the whole day’s hard work, they were worn out, but they were still happy. It’s our patients’ own choir. Giving a name to it means a lot. People advised to collect name from the internet. There are various names coming: Little Red Person, Red Boat, Red Dragon Fly, etc. Finally, the name of Red Apple made an impression, and the name was decided. 

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On August 2, in the art festival named You, Me and Love was opened in National Conference Center of Chaoyang District, Beijing. Our Red Apple Choir were ready for their debut. We came to the studio and watched rehearsals of other groups. we found they were serious and professional. We could not help being nervous for our little Red Apple. 

There are professional makeup artists to serve the other groups. We just have the parents to help. Each of our children tried to wear white shirt and black pants to unify clothing. When they finished make up, the shooting was about to begin. Our staff tried hard to make everything ready for the shooting. Their parents were assigned missions: refining the make-up, taking DV, taking care of bags or clothes, etc. People were busy, but excitedly. It’s an opportunity to perform with the best professional art groups on the same stage. 

It’s our Red Apple Choir’s turn. When the host announced our group—a group of children with hemophilia, the audience became quiet. Our red apples had no stage fright at all.  

When the lights were on and the music was started, the sound of Xianxian and Beibei attracted all audiences. The honor guests sitting in the front were sitting straight. The people took out their cameras and recorded this special group. Haotian, Xiaowei and Xiaobai took turns to sing and put the song to its climax. 7 choruses made a perfect ending. 

There burst long claps from the audience. Their performance did not have many vocal skills, but their innocent and authentic attracted every people. The people were moved. They wiped away tears and returned our red apples with sincere and warm claps. The host asked to take picture with our red apples. Our red apples are the best. 

The show fulfilled one of the dreams of the children with hemophilia. It also fulfilled the dream of the staff of Hemophilia Home. The tears of being refused, denied and pain were moved away. We believe our lovely red apples will have a best future, and all patients with hemophilia will have a best future. 

Original article written by Nan Zhang, translated by Maggie Li, and edited by Yanyan Zhang