BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) — In the first week after opening his car wash in Nantong, east China’s Jiangsu Province in late 2023, Ji Hui regretted the decision to start a business that employs people with Down syndrome.
“I felt like I had opened an outlet just for myself,” said Ji, a former professional weightlifter, who is in his 20s. He ended up cleaning cars all by himself for a whole week.
The idea to open a car wash for people with intellectual disabilities resulted from an unplanned visit to a special education school in Nantong with a friend. It was during this visit that Ji met a group of students with Down syndrome.
He learned that the students had received some kind of car washing training at school, but the chance for them to secure regular employment would be very slim due to the syndrome.
“So I figured it would be good to open a small outlet to give these students something to do,” Ji recalled.
Ji, who has a stable income thanks to his other initiatives, thus opted to open a car wash, which he named Xibao’er.
After the difficult first week of operation, Ji decided to use his own car as a tool to teach the employees how to work effectively, guiding them step by step and multiple times a day.
At the start of operations, some employees did not even know how to hold a towel. “Now they each have their own tasks and responsibilities, and everyone is doing an excellent job,” Ji said, highlighting the significant progress made by his staff.
Just over a year later, Ji had the confidence to open a second Xibao’er car wash outlet — with his total number of employees increasing from single digits to more than 10.
Ji said that by working very closely with his employees, he had truly come to understand people with special needs, while witnessing with his own eyes how they had improved little by little. “It’s not that they can never learn — on the contrary, they can learn to do things well,” he explained.
Friday marks the World Down Syndrome Day. According to the United Nations, the estimated incidence of Down syndrome ranges from 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 1,100 live births worldwide. An official report released in 2012 estimated that 23,000 to 25,000 children were born with Down syndrome in China every year.
In recent years, more attention has been paid to the improvement of the employment prospects and social adaptation of people with Down syndrome and other intellectual disabilities in China, whose employment rate in the country could be less than 5 percent, as suggested by some statistics.
Notably, in China’s five-year plan for enhancing the well-being of people with disabilities released in 2021, the government emphasized the need to create more opportunities for individuals with intellectual disabilities to work near their homes, receive vocational rehabilitation and achieve social integration.
Experts, meanwhile, have called for more coordinated efforts between the government, social organizations, enterprises and individuals who are willing to help, in providing stable job opportunities for people with intellectual disabilities.
According to Liao Juan, an associate professor at the School of Management of the Beijing-based Capital Normal University, money spent on training and other support costs can lead to successful employment, thus resulting in long-term benefits for people with intellectual disabilities.
She noted that regular employment can enhance the social participation of individuals with intellectual disabilities, help them break free from isolation, reduce the amount of time needed for daily caregiving by their family members, and even lower broader social costs that are shared by society.
While many people with intellectual disabilities in China have engaged in handicraft production as their form of employment, more individuals and social organizations, just like Ji, have turned to the service sector to create increased opportunities for such people — enabling them to work outside their homes and giving them more chances to interact with others.
Located in Hohhot, capital of north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Xiaobo Yaohong is a Chinese dumpling restaurant that employs individuals with Down syndrome, and has been operated by 55-year-old Hong Bo since 2023.
Hong, who has worked in the food industry for years, opened the restaurant partly due to his previous experience of eight months of blindness caused by diabetes.
To train individuals with Down syndrome to become qualified employees, Hong personally designed training programs and compiled instructional materials — ranging from how to greet customers, to how to cook dumplings.
Having started with a first batch of just six employees, Xiaobo Yaohong Dumpling House has now grown to several franchised outlets and has provided training to around 80 individuals with Down syndrome. Moreover, many volunteers, including university professors and psychological experts, have also joined this effort — working together to improve training and employment programs.
Bai Ye, honorary chairperson of the association for people with intellectual disabilities and their families of Inner Mongolia, believes that working outside the home is part of the lifelong rehabilitation needed for people with intellectual disabilities.
Bai, whose son was born with Down syndrome, said some individuals with intellectual disabilities are actually reluctant to stay at home after graduating from special schools. Staying at home in the long term could lead to deterioration of their intellectual and overall abilities.
“For them, working is also a process of rehabilitation,” she said.
Ji Hui echoed the significant impact of working outside the home on his employees. He said the most noticeable transformation was witnessed in an employee nicknamed Chubby.
According to this employee’s mother, she and Chubby had exchanged very few words over the 20 years before he started working at the car wash — as he was afraid to talk to others and could not even make eye contact.
However, the car wash job created opportunities for Chubby to meet and communicate with strangers, resulting in him becoming more lively.
Chubby’s mom even spotted him wearing headphones and dancing in his room at night on several occasions — scenes she had never witnessed in more than two decades.
Now, having gained an increased understanding of people with Down syndrome via interactions with his employees, Ji hopes that he can do even more to help such people.
“If there’s a chance, I’d love to open Xibao’er flower shops, where girls can do floral arrangements, and maybe even open a few dry cleaners, as these are all ways to address the employment challenges faced by people with special needs,” he said.
