It is a medical-breakthrough story that went long untold: how a team of researchers spent 13 years amid the turbulence of the Cultural Revolution to find a successful treatment for malaria.
At a time in the 1960s and 1970s when knowledge was scorned and intellectuals publicly humiliated, the hundreds of scientists persevered in transforming an ancient healing method into a modern medicine that has saved millions of lives, especially in the developing world. Their accomplishments only took the spotlight this month, with the awarding of a prestigious US medical award to 80-year-old pharmacologist Tu Youyou.
A researcher at the Institute of Materia Medica at the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Tu won this year's Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for the discovery of artemisinin and its use in the treatment of malaria.
'Whereas the finding of quinine was largely attributed to the historical use of [the plant] Cinchona Ledgeriana in Peru, the discovery of qinghaosu is a gift to mankind from traditional Chinese medicine,' Tu said in her acceptance speech in New York.
Treatments based on artemisinin are now recommended by the World Health Organisation.
Tu, who has a bachelor's degree in pharmacy at Peking University, never earned a postgraduate qualification. Her contribution never brought her the highest honour a scientist can receive on the mainland - admission to the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences - although she was nominated several times. The exclusion, she told the Global People magazine four years ago, was the 'biggest regret of my life'.