Feeling the darkness: Journey in the Guangming Experience Hall reveals how empathy grows when sight taken away and listening begins

Global Times

6th February 2026

Feeling the darkness: Journey in the Guangming Experience Hall reveals how empathy grows when sight taken away and listening begins

By Liang Rui

Inside a "cafe," 25-year-old guide Liu Suwei handed out six small bottles and asked visitors to identify the scents inside. 

Yet after "losing vision," a Global Times reporter found that even familiar smells became strangely elusive. 

Jasmine, red dates… Scents once instantly recognizable at that moment hovered on the tip of the tongue, unnamed.

This is not a real cafe, but a simulated one inside the Guangming Experience Hall in Ji'nan, East China's Shandong Province - a space designed to immerse visitors in life without sight.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202602/1354925.shtml