Ovation for China’s Aids crisis hero Wang Shuping days before her final curtain

The Chinese doctor who exposed an Aids epidemic in rural China in the 1990s was in the audience when the world premiere of a play based on her life received a standing ovation, but she would not live to see it finish its run.

Whistle-blower Wang Shuping died on September 21, a week after travelling to London for the opening performance of The King of Hell’s Palace at the Hampstead Theatre.

Wang – who left China for the United States in 2001, never to return – had been hiking with her husband in Salt Lake City, Utah, where the couple lived, when she died of a suspected heart attack, aged 59.

The play, written by American playwright Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig and directed by Royal Shakespeare Company veteran Michael Boyd, dramatised Wang’s “extraordinary mission to expose a cover-up of epic proportions”, according to its website.

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Cowhig grew up with Wang and their families often went on holiday together. While she was writing the play, Wang gave her many hours of interviews and was closely involved with the creative process from the start.

“She was like my aunt more than anything, and was always very supportive and helpful and candid about her experiences,” Cowhig said.

In the 1990s Wang exposed how villagers in the central Chinese province of Henan had contracted HIV and hepatitis C from contaminated transfusions at government-run blood banks. Blood donations were a common way for impoverished locals to earn extra cash.

Wang reported her concerns to the Ministry of Health, which shut down all blood collection stations nationwide in 1996 and later reopened them with mandatory screening for these diseases.

However, this was not enough to stop the unchecked spread of Aids across several mostly rural provinces in central China.

Wang did not receive any accolades within China for speaking out about the epidemic. Instead, she was forced out of her job, harassed by local police and even had her clinic vandalised.

Under mounting pressure from the authorities, Wang’s marriage to her first husband broke down and they divorced. She moved to the US to become a medical researcher.

The same year, the government admitted the extent of the crisis, by which time more than half a million people were believed to have been affected, leaving behind at least 100,000 so-called “Aids orphans” who lost their parents to the disease.

But Cowhig and Celeste Den, the Asian-American actress who plays Wang in the production, said the play was “never meant to be an attack on China”.

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While the play depicts events that happened in China, it resonated with many contemporary political and social problems occurring elsewhere in the world, making it “not just a Chinese problem” but a “global problem”, Cowhig said.

“At the heart of the story is a human question: what are you willing to sacrifice to do what you think is right?” Den said.

“[Wang] gave up the only country she’d ever lived in, the only world and life she’d ever known – the life she’d spent her entire first 30 years building. She was willing to give all that up to tell the truth and to help people.”

But Beijing had not forgotten about Wang. The late doctor said in a September 9 statement that a relative had called her on August 22 saying that officials had tried to intimidate her family in Henan. Cowhig said it had been Beijing’s third attempt to pressure Wang’s relations since she had moved to the US.

“During the past 10 years, officers from the PRC Ministry of Health, Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of State Security have been to my hometown to interrogate my relatives and colleagues several times, trying to silence me,” Wang said in the statement.

They wanted to intimidate her relatives into asking her to stop the play as it would “embarrass” the government, she said.

“In China, pressurising and punishing relatives and colleagues of people who say things that the Chinese government doesn’t like is common,” she said.

“The only thing harder than standing up to the Communists and their security police is not giving in to pressure from friends and relatives who are threatened with their livelihoods, all because you are speaking out.

“But even after all this time, I will still not be silenced, even though I am deeply sad that this intimidation is happening yet again. The King of Hell’s Palace will go ahead and I am really looking forward to seeing the production.”

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Since Wang’s death, Den said she had noticed a significant increase in the number of medical professionals coming to see the play to educate themselves, as well as those who felt a more personal connection with the poignant story.

“I’ve had a number of Chinese nationals or people of Chinese descent come up to me … and break down crying because they’ve experienced similar situations in terms of helplessness against the government,” she said. “The reception has been more than I could have expected.”

Den described Wang as a “cheerful, funny and humble” person who was open and supportive of everyone involved in the play.

“She was so unassuming, if you saw her walking down the street you’d just think she was somebody’s auntie,” she said.

In the play, Den, Boyd and Cowhig do not shy away from bringing out the less flattering sides of Wang’s character, portraying her as a fully rounded individual rather than a saint or martyr.

“She’s simply a woman who, in some people’s opinion, is too stubborn in her need for truth. She is willing to hurt her family, to hurt her husband, to bring harassment and intimidation to people she cares about,” Den said.

“Both the director and Frances encouraged me to not sugarcoat her, not to make her saintly, she is a complex woman, sometimes stubborn and ugly.”

The play ended its run on October 12, but Cowhig said she planned to translate the script into Chinese so it eventually could be produced in Taiwan, as well as in other media such as film, television and podcasts.