It is a typical summer’s day in Hangzhou. At first, the sky is blue, then the air quality index falls to 49 and the sky clouds over. At 2:30pm, a car with the number plate AW20C2 is driving along Moganshan Road.

Xiaofan Wang gazes out of the window at the city that he has known since 1982. His first visit to Hangzhou was after his graduation from Wuhan University, when he came to visit classmates. That same year, he would be on his way to the US after winning a scholarship with the China-United States Biochemistry Examination and Application (CUSBEA).

“I remember this road, but the trees are much taller now,” Wang says as he keeps his gaze on the road. The 68-year-old, now with thinning hair, speaks softly, as if he is still that timid teenager.

With titles such as chair professor at Duke University, as well as board member and advisor to Westlake University, Wang has had a rich and storied life. However, he never even finished secondary education. He left school and spent eight years as a worker before teaching himself to pass the university entrance exam and then going on to become a renowned biologist.

At 2:45pm, the car pulls over at the Department of Science and Technology of the Zhejiang provincial government, where 100 people are waiting to attend Wang’s presentation. He is going to talk to staff in the science and technology department about the latest developments in international biomedicine and research management. “We need to manage research funding,” he says. “Money doesn’t fall from the sky; it comes from taxpayers.”

Wang travels light. A backpack is all he needs for his meeting at Westlake, the presentation at the Department of Science and Technology, and a visit to the Children’s Hospital. His three-day visit to Hangzhou is tightly planned.

Wang has spent 41 years of his life away from China, but, at the age of 68, he is still constantly speaking out for the cause of scientific research in China.

Xiaofan Wang

The white cloth was stained black.

When he was 15, Wang moved from Xinjiang to Henan with his grandmother and sister. When they got off the train in Xuchang, his mother was already waiting. Together, they boarded another bus that eventually took them to their destination, Nanyang.

Xunan Road was busy with people pushing trolleys filled with coal from the nearby Pingdingshan coal mine. They were mostly dressed in hand-woven clothes; “the white cloth was stained black,” Wang observed. For the first time, he became conscious of the gulf between rich and poor.

Wang had grown up in an affluent family. His father worked for the Xinjiang provincial government, while his mother taught at the Xinjiang Petroleum College.

However, the Wang family was brought down by the Cultural Revolution. Wang’s father was sent to a farm to be reeducated, and his mother spent her days writing letters of self-criticism. Wang was about to graduate when his school was shut down. Denunciation posters and slogans bearing his mother’s name could be seen everywhere: on the street, in his home, even on his bedframe.

In 1970, when he was 15 years old, Wang’s mother resigned, and the family moved to Nanyang, where all four lived crammed together in one room. On windy nights, Wang would climb up on the roof to lay bricks on it so that it wouldn’t be lifted by the wind. He was already the man of the house.

Every day, Wang would walk two kilometers on a dirt road to fetch hot water and food from the factory. On rainy days, the road became muddy, so Wang would hold the lunch box in one hand, the umbrella in the other, and dangle the water bottle from the handle.

Those eight years in Henan taught Wang how bitter life could be. He still recalls how children from the village would gather to watch the Wang family eat. He only found out later that the steamed buns made of flour that the family received were a luxury exclusively for the factory workers. At that time, most of the villagers survived on sweet potatoes.

During those years when his education was interrupted by the Cultural Revolution, Wang’s priority was to find a stable job in the factory. Yet, even as a factory worker, his exceptional intelligence was obvious to all.

Wang has always been a quick learner. In 1972, he was sent to the No. 1 Machinery Factory at Baoji to learn to make gears. Manufacturing gears involves mathematic calculations, particularly fractions, which Wang had not yet learned when his school was closed down. Wang and his colleagues taught themselves by borrowing mathematics textbooks from high school students. In the subsequent exam, Wang got a higher score than any of the high school graduates.

In 1977, the Chinese university entrance examination was reintroduced, taking place during the winter for the first and only time. Wang took the exam after just a few months’ preparation. In the English part of the exam, he just doodled on the answer sheet and got nine points.

After his second attempt at the university entrance exam, Wang went straight to Wuhan on a work trip. On his day off, he went rowing with colleagues on the East Lake. Noticing some buildings along the nearby hills, he asked, “What’s that?” His friends replied, “That’s Wuhan University.” “I see,” Wang mused.

The very next day, Wang received an urgent telegram from the factory with the order, “Return immediately for health inspection”. He was the only one out of the 5,000 or so workers at the factory who had made it through the exam. In fact, he had scored more than 40 points above the cutoff line. Without even consulting with his family, Wang decided to enroll in the biology department of Wuhan University.

At university, Wang finished all the required credits within three and a half years and requested early graduation. In 1981, he took the CUSBEA test in English and ranked first.

The Guy Who Wrote All the Letters

In 2008, more than 50 internationally renowned scholars, including Xiaofan Wang, Yigong Shi, and Yi Rao, wrote to the government calling for an increase in subsidies for Ph.D. students. At that time, the average monthly subsidy for Ph.D. students was only three hundred yuan.

In the same year, Wang put together an international team of experts and conducted evaluations of the life science and medical departments in various universities and research institutes, including the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University, Peking University, and Fudan and Zhejiang Universities, a project that, as he recalled, “triggered reform in the evaluation system of scientific research in China.”

At one meeting with central government officials, Wang was introduced as “the guy who wrote all the letters.” It is said that Wang wrote over fifty recommendation letters to leaders at or above national ministerial level over the years.

In 2008, Yigong Shi declined a tenured position at Princeton and an offer to become a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Research Institute and returned to China. Although this probably seemed strange to many people, Wang understood perfectly: “My generation went through tough times in China, but we also witnessed the economic takeoff after the Opening Up Policy. We want to help make China stronger and more influential, and we want to be more than just bystanders.”

In the winter of 2015, Shi took Wang out for dinner in Beijing. Shi shared the news that he intended to establish a new type of research-driven university in China, and he invited Wang to participate in the new university’s decision-making. Wang took up the offer in a heartbeat.

Wang has always respected Shi, who is 12 years his junior. “To build a university from scratch is a huge and complex project,” he observed. “I believe in Shi. He’s always passionate about the causes he believes in and inspires others to dream too,” he said.

And Shi is always willing to put in the effort. Many academics consider networking and fundraising to be boring, yet they are crucial factors in keeping the university afloat.

With over 30 years of research experience at Duke University on the molecular mechanisms of cancer metastasis, Wang is very well aware that he is not good at administrative work, nor does he take any pleasure in it. Yet he has almost never missed a board or advisory meeting at Westlake.

At Westlake, if President Shi can be described as the chef, then Wang would be the food critic. Once, Wang came across a document that was due to be discussed at the next board meeting and noticed that it had already been signed off by Shi. He immediately called on Shi and voiced his objection. “Procedure-wise, this is problematic. If others notice that you have already signed off on this, perhaps they will keep quiet and not express their opinions,” he said. President Shi took his advice and amended the document on the spot.

Fast-forward to a day in 2016, and Wang was chatting with a student in his lab who had found a clear picture of his hometown in Shanxi on Google Maps. Wang almost jumped off his chair. “Really?” he exclaimed, “There’s a place I want to find, too!”

Together, they looked at Google Maps, moving eastward from the U.S. across Europe. As the map zoomed in on China, Wang gradually identified the factory where he had once worked and the dormitory he once called home. The factory was long abandoned, and nature had already taken over. “This is the place that forged my world view,” said 68-year-old Wang.

Do we dare to join Westlake?

One particular Saturday afternoon, more than 90 principal investigators gathered at a meeting, including about half of the current PIs at Westlake and a few foreign PIs, too.

Speaking at the meeting, Wang said, “Adversity is what helps a scientist grow. We must question ourselves. Can we grow to become the pillars of scientific research in China?”

When Westlake University was founded, Wang often heard the question, “Should we join them?” Five years later, the question among researchers has become, “Do we dare to join them?”

“At the beginning, many weren’t sure about Westlake’s prospects. Five years later, Westlake has clear goals, a team of exceptional talents, and has started to produce results. It now poses real challenges for those who want to join,” Wang explains.

Wang believes that good scientists are not “taught”. For years, he’s been pushing for the establishment of a scientific evaluation system in China. He even wrote once that using the number of published papers as the only standard puts too much power in the hands of the editors of the top journals, confusing the direction of national policy and misdirecting investment in science.

To Wang, having a proper management mechanism will impact the emergence and development of leaders in the scientific community, promoting major original breakthroughs and pushing society forward. This is what he hopes to see Westlake achieve.

When Wang was in the US, he would often read books on world history with his son. When reading about the impact of the River Nile on ancient Egyptian society, he noticed the similarities with China. “Society is also a living organism, with innate rules and regulations, much like life science.” He observes, “Mankind needs a mechanism to keep us in line, or society would collapse.”

And society is made up of individuals. Wang went to a hairdresser once in China, where he was offered a 50% discount because he was over sixty. Wang politely declined the offer, saying that he would prefer to respect the work of the hairdresser. This biologist never stops thinking and caring about society.

An important event occurred in 1966, when China was deep in the grip of the Cultural Revolution. Wang suddenly developed a fever. A group of Red Guards had been sent to denounce his mother, but one of them stopped and carried the young Wang to the hospital. This incident became one of the guiding lights of Wang’s life, reminding him that even in the darkest of times, people’s humanity still shines through.

We are all connected across time and space, just like these 72 hours with Xiaofan Wang that spanned the past and the present and linked them to the future.