Our aim is to raise money for Butterfly Home, a palliative care centre located in Changsha, China. In order to do this we are undertaking a sponsored cycle in central China from the 5th September 2011.
Butterfly Home is dedicated to the care of abandoned terminally ill children. Ranging from only a few months old to their teens, children are brought to the centre with poor diagnosis and limited methods of treatment. Butterfly Home provides the children with basic medications for their individual illnesses, 24-hour one-on-one care, and most importantly gives them the feeling that they are loved. Donations to the Butterfly Home will go towards life saving operations for children in the centre's care, and enable the centre to expand it's life changing community care service for local families.
Cycle Route
The route we have chosen for our cycle is approx. 750 Km / 466 miles, which we aim to complete within 10 day. We are touring central china utilizing only map and compass for orientation. We will mainly follow a section of the great Yangtze River upstream. The Chinese like to say, “If you haven’t travelled up the mighty Yangzte, you haven’t been anywhere”, so there we are - being somewhere. We begin in Anqing, a city south of Anhui Province on the north shore of the lower Yangtze, 500km into mainland west from Shanghai. With the river on one side and mountains on the other we cycle through the Yangtze valley towards Hubei Province. Before the Three Gorge Dam we turn off at Dongting Lake to head south to Changsha, one of the areas devastated by the extensive flooding that occurred in parts of China earlier this year. Our route will end with a knock on the door of Butterfly Home care centre, symbolically handing over the donation
When I was given the opportunity to study in China in September 2010 it was an offer too good to resist! 5 days later I found myself registered on a 12-month crash course studying Chinese at Zhejiang University and on a plane to Hangzhou, China. While looking for a more meaningful Chinese experience related to my degree in Research Psychology I came across the Butterfly Home. I found their work inspiring and decided to volunteer at the centre at the end of my studies. After speaking to Alan at the Butterfly Home, I had the (brilliant) idea of a sponsored cycle to raise money for the centre before starting my work there.
Neil Clarke
A good pal is always there for someone who proposes a 700km cycle in a foreign country on the other side of the world. Initially Lana's proposal to cycle Up the Yangtze river filled me with an equal measure of confusion and apprehension, however after reading up on the Butterfly Home and the fantastic work they are doing in China I decided to agree to the challenge. After three months training on the rough and ready roads of Fife, Scotland, I feel prepared for anything even the most irate Chinese lorry driver can throw at me, and the warm feeling inside from all the generous donations you lovely folks are going to give will be more than enough to propel us across the finish line. So dig deep folks, and do it for the kids.
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