{"id":20641,"date":"2022-03-15T21:12:43","date_gmt":"2022-03-15T13:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/?p=20641"},"modified":"2024-04-17T11:42:49","modified_gmt":"2024-04-17T03:42:49","slug":"scent-of-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/2022\/03\/scent-of-darkness\/","title":{"rendered":"Scent of Darkness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A blind man gets his life back with a fragrance company.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phoebe Chu<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Holding his guide dog, Wan Tsz-Yin sets off to his fragrance company. From Tuen Mun to Prince Edward, his flurry companion Remy accompanies him, so that he can walk faster to catch a bus without hitting obstacles along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRemy now stays home during the pandemic to avoid infection. So sometimes I have to go to work alone,\u201d say Wan, whose left eye has blurred vision and his right eye is completely blind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 10:00 am, the 32-year-old fragrance company founder starts doing measurements and mixing essential oils of different flavors together with cream to create products with different functions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can easily tell the smell of lavender and orange, but I always mix up pine and cedar. It takes time to remember all the scents I work with,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wan\u2019s company has six products including aroma oil, lipsticks, hand cream and mask diffusers. Anti-allergy hand cream is the best seller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accurate measurement is the key to making aroma oil. But it is a difficult task for Wan and his colleagues.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the concentration of essential oils varies in different products, the speed of adding them has to be adjusted. Wan says his team has spent a lot of time looking for the best apparatus for accurate measurement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMost of my colleagues are only left with around 10% of their eyesight. We use small droppers to have better control of the amount of essential oil added. Colleagues who have better vision do measurement while others pack products,\u201d Wan says.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe also have to hire someone from an accountant firm to handle paperwork for our company registration, as all of us cannot read due to eyesight problems,\u201d Wan says.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Stalls set up by Wan and his team at a secondary school to sell and promote their products
(Photo Courtesy of Wan Tsz-Yin)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A Sudden Heavy Blow<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wan was not born blind. In 2008, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor that pinched his nerve, causing his blindness. He was 19.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was admitted to a hospital for a few months. I did not expect that I would be blind at that time,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wan recalled his whole world turned \u201cblack in color\u201d when he stepped out of the hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI felt like I was a burden to my family. I stayed home most of the time for the first six months after being discharged. I felt worthless as I could not take care of myself. I could not even eat on my own. I cried every day,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His family sought help from some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which offers help to people with eyesight problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople there (NGOs) taught me some basic life skills such as taking showers and dining. I started learning how to take care of myself,\u201d Wan recalls.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wan says it took him three to four years to accept the fact that he is blind and move on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He started joining different rehabilitation courses in the same year, such as learning how to be a visually impaired massage therapist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut I still did not know what I could do in the future at that time. I wondered if massage therapist was the only thing I could do,\u201d Wan says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data from Census and Statistics Department of Hong Kong Government shows that the unemployment rate among people with eyesight difficulty in 2021 was 88.8 per cent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were about 47,600 people in Hong Kong who had eyesight difficulty, accounting for 0.6 per cent of the Hong Kong population in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A New Career Path<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wan eventually did not work as a massage therapist and founded his fragrance company in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy friend asked me to use lavender aroma oil to put myself into a good sleep when I came across some family problems back in 2016,\u201d Wan says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After using fragrance products for six years, he joined a fragrance making course and a teacher there joined her students to set up their fragrance company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it might be a new career path for the visually impaired, so I want to give it a try and see if it works out for me. That is how I started my company,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wan is also thinking about starting his own social enterprise, offering more job opportunities to people with eyesight problems to work together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI hope it can provide a working environment for people with visual difficulty where they do not have to worry about making mistakes and being discriminated. A workplace that will help them thrive,\u201d Wan says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sub-edited by Leung Pak-hei<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A blind man gets his life back with a fragrance company. Phoebe Chu Holding his guide dog, Wan Tsz-Yin sets off to his fragrance company. From Tuen Mun to Prince Edward, his flurry companion Remy accompanies him, so that he can walk faster to catch a bus without hitting obstacles along the way. \u201cRemy now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":20658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2175,79],"tags":[1925,1927,1926],"class_list":["post-20641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-march-2022","category-people","tag-blind","tag-scent","tag-sight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20641"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20657,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20641\/revisions\/20657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}