Holy mao! What a fun launch party! Mike Wester arrived at XL after a 50-km walk to kick off to launch his 90-km “mao-a-thon” mission—then mowed down a birthday cake, Brendan Davis did a podcast on the spot. We had super-sized Maovember photo frames and pins, a slide-show of wacky parties from the past four years and mustache cookies thanks to charity partners Bread of Life. Plus, our darts challenge. All of this was made possible by the support by XL manager Jane Cui.

At the end of the first night, we had a rmb2,100 donation from XL, rmb1,080 from our darts challenge and cookie sales, and over rmb8000 in mao-a-thon sponsorships and almost rmb6,000 in pin sales and donations. That puts us at just over rmb17,000 for the 2017 Maovember thus far, with lots more to come!

Learn more Maovember here and see what else we have in the queue here:

Maovember focuses on quirky events for good causes. Our 2022 partner is Library Project, which has furnished thousands of reading rooms in rural schools. Learn more about Maovember here. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.