Chapter 105

A Chinese pharmaceutical company formally announced that it had overcome diabetes: its hydroxy insulin could cure the disease completely, had finished phase three with no side effects, had received FDA marketing approval, and would go on sale in American hospitals on the first of October.

The news reached front pages everywhere, and Nord, one of the largest insulin manufacturers, immediately issued a statement calling it an outright lie. Insulin being Nord's flagship, one can imagine what a drug claiming to cure diabetes would do to them — and in fact, from the moment the announcement was made, their share price had begun to slide.

Sanofi, the largest producer of insulin glargine, then stated that no cure existed by current means, and that the new insulin it was developing would control blood glucose on one injection a week, that phase three was going well, and that it was expected to launch next year.

Unlike the companies' opposition, open and otherwise, the first person nobody expected to speak was a Nobel laureate. Professor Auren James of Cambridge said publicly that hydroxy insulin was the greatest invention of the century, and that its arrival would transform the lives of several hundred million diabetics worldwide. The terminology in it went over most people's heads, and his endorsement lent the thing a certain credibility.

Then Cerulean Pharmaceuticals published the data, and somebody produced a summary. Hydroxy insulin differs greatly from the insulin currently on the market. Diabetes comes down to a problem with insulin secretion or insulin action, and treating it requires insulin — for life, to sustain life and living — which is called exogenous insulin. Hydroxy insulin's difference is that while supplying insulin it also stimulates the body's own production, stimulating and repairing the islet β cells in the pancreas, so that the body secretes its own insulin endogenously.

The data added further plausibility, and true or not, the drug was about to launch — and as Auren James had said, diabetics in misery genuinely were waiting for it. Patients don't care about a company's size or a brand; a drug that treats the disease is a good drug.

Unfortunately, national approvals taking time, it could launch only in China and America for now. The good news was that Cerulean had run its trials in America, so with the FDA's approval, entering other countries would save a great deal of time.

China doesn't accept the American regulator's paperwork, and the data is shared, and Cerulean had put an enormous amount of time and effort into the domestic approval from the start. There had been problems along the way — and knowing this might bring genuinely significant treatment to diabetics, the national regulator moved unusually fast, and unlike the customary interminable process, having determined that hydroxy insulin "represents a significant improvement over marketed drugs in treating or diagnosing the disease" and qualified for priority review, approval took only three months. A simplification of process only; it did not mean the trials could be fudged.

At home, hydroxy insulin went straight up the trending list, with a dark red exploding beside it soon after.

By last year's figures there were nearly a hundred and thirty million diabetics in China alone, and even with most of them not online, someone in every family or circle of friends would see it. Within twenty minutes there were tens of thousands of comments, with reposts and likes past fifty thousand and, from the platform's own dashboard, still climbing — until at a certain moment people clicking through found a blank page. Weibo had fallen over.

I think this may be the first time Weibo's crashed over something that isn't somebody's wedding or divorce.

That didn't dampen anybody. If Weibo was down there were still Toutiao and Douyin, and people moved platform while making the observation: It's 9012 and diabetes is about to be curable, and Weibo can still fall over.

Twenty minutes of emergency repairs and it was back, with hydroxy insulin still first and, immediately below it, hydroxy insulin launches on the first of October.

Within an hour the subject occupied five places on the trending list.

Cerulean Pharmaceuticals successfully develops hydroxy insulin.

Cerulean Pharmaceuticals.

Nobel laureate calls hydroxy insulin the greatest invention.

My father has been diabetic for ten years. If this is true I will get him treated however hard it is.

I can't stop crying. My grandmother died of diabetes last year — she'd lost her sight, kidney failure, it was agony. If only she could have held on a little longer.

Diagnosed this year. I'd resigned myself to insulin for life, and here's this today. Counting the days to October.

Is it real? Thank you, Cerulean Pharmaceuticals.

As a devoted Cerulean user I have only one thing to say: Cerulean is a legend.

Some people, whether to demonstrate their independence of mind or otherwise, questioned it sarcastically, privately certain it was a marketing exercise — the largest pharmaceutical companies abroad couldn't produce a cure and some small domestic company could? A fair number held this view, including a number of large accounts, who described it as maintaining a healthy scepticism and urged people not to use a small company's drug unthinkingly.

Before the internet could get to them, a good many official accounts reposted Cerulean's announcement, the drug regulator among them, with the line: humanity has finally defeated diabetes. The Chinese are second to nobody. A blessing to the people. At which the public caught up: the regulators of both China and America had cleared it, so presumably you know better than both. Others agreed elaborately — quite so, quite so, and if anybody near you has diabetes or you contract it yourself, whatever you do don't use it, you might be swindled.

Day by day the interest didn't fall but grew, and beyond celebrating, people had a great many questions, the commonest being which cities could offer it first. So the state broadcaster released an interview. The subject was Feng Jiang.

The interviewer was a household name, and after some pleasantries came to it. "Director Feng, we all have a great many questions. Which cities will be able to offer treatment first?"

He assembled his words. "We've agreed a partnership with Sinopharm. Which province or city is difficult to answer specifically, because there are so many — I can say we've agreed arrangements with ninety per cent of tier-three hospitals, and the list is on our website.

"Abroad, unfortunately, capacity means we can only guarantee supply to New York and Los Angeles for now. The hospitals are on the website as well."

The interviewer asked for the address on the audience's behalf, and moved to the second question. "The other is price. What will hydroxy insulin cost per injection?"

He considered. "As you all know, development costs for a new drug are always high, so we've been relatively careful. The price abroad is six thousand yuan per injection. Domestically it is five hundred."

Visible surprise. "Director Feng — you said five hundred, domestically?"

He nodded, and said it seriously. "There were a hundred and twenty-eight million diabetics in this country last year — nearly a hundred and thirty million. This price lets us cure more patients while not making a loss. It's only a pity that hydroxy insulin isn't on the reimbursement list."

The interviewer's respect showed. "Five hundred isn't cheap, and for most patients it isn't unbearable. Forgive me — may I ask why the price abroad is six thousand and the domestic price five hundred?"

He gave the official answer. "Transport, operating and production costs, taxes and so on. I consider six thousand a reasonable price."

Which was about the end of it, and the interviewer closed with, "Thank you to Cerulean Pharmaceuticals for what you have done for patients. We hope for more from you in the years ahead."

Views on the broadcaster's site climbed fast, and viewers were left blinking — at five hundred especially, where one comment scrolling past caught everybody: Five hundred??? I was ready to spend my entire savings on treatment.

Cheaper than their hair serum and a jar of their face cream.

A company with a conscience.

Somebody did the arithmetic. Two injections a month is a thousand a month, six thousand for six months — the domestic six months costs what one injection costs abroad.

And somebody worried. Is Cerulean making anything at five hundred? Will it affect them later? Development costs so much.

No. I must do something. Cerulean must not lose money.

Cerulean must not lose money acquired a great deal of support very quickly, and people acted on it, most directly by buying things. That evening, sales in the livestreams of several Cerulean sub-brands multiplied, and the already popular sunscreen and foundation sold out outright.

Before anybody in the livestreams had worked out what was happening, the comments filled with neat ranks of Cerulean must not lose money.

The head of PR heard shortly and didn't know whether to laugh. What sort of gift from heaven was this? Professional instinct caught up quickly: handled properly this could add a great deal to sales, and there went his annual bonus. He rallied and set about making use of it.

As October approached, the attention grew. Before that September, Cerulean had been a cosmetics brand to most people, appearing constantly in beauty creators' videos, with a saying attached: anything Cerulean makes is good. Rejuvenate and the hair serum were both more famous than Cerulean itself, which is normal — does one need to know the hen to eat the egg?

After September everything was different, and more and more people wondered what this company actually was. Founded barely a few years ago and busy ever since; call it cosmetics and it also sells a hair serum and household products — all right, that can be stretched to cosmetics. But what is hydroxy insulin? Turning into a pharmaceutical company is rather a change of register.

So all manner of people began investigating, tracing threads, assembling Cerulean's history. On Bilibili the first video about it passed a million views, made by a creator called GetsToTheBottom — and it was at this point that Li Lan came into his view.

Because having looked Cerulean up, he found the corporate registry showing somebody called Li Lan as the largest controlling shareholder, with Feng Jiang and Zhang Lin second and third. The latter two he had covered in his video on Cerulean's development. On Li Lan he had found nothing.

So he looked up who this shareholder was, and it took his jaw off — because by the intellectual property records, the famous resveratrol serum in Rejuvenate, the chrysophanol extracted from heshouwu in the hair serum, and even the hydroxy insulin patents all belonged to this Li Lan rather than to Cerulean.

Feeling he might have found something enormous, he suppressed his excitement and typed Li Lan into a search box, expecting a certain amount of work — and the very first result caught him: the youngest professor item that had trended the previous year.

At his computer he opened his mouth, and clicking through in the spirit of verification, read that this Li Lan was currently a professor at Peking's School of Pharmaceutical Sciences. His instinct said he had the right person: pharmacy, the subject fitted, and a professor was no surprise. The youngest, though? Reading that she was born in 1992, he did not want to believe that somebody of that standing was his own age.

He opened the School's site and found her under the staff listing, and at 2013–2015, doctorate, Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, let out a long breath. No wonder the first person to speak had been a Cambridge professor. At that point he was completely certain: this Li Lan was Cerulean's largest shareholder and the developer of Rejuvenate, the hair serum and the hydroxy insulin. Somebody formidable, extremely young, and good-looking.

Scrolling on, he found the 2015 Lancet paper on hydroxy insulin in her publication list.

He searched again, on the reasonable view that a record like that couldn't have left no trace before — and sure enough, as he dug, a targeted drug found as an undergraduate, top of the province in the entrance exam, an Olympiad championship, arrived one after another.

By which point he was numb. Is this a person? We're both born in the nineties — why do I feel like an unevolved monkey from Mount Emei?

He posted a status that made no sense to anybody. My entire worldview has just taken the largest hit of its life, but I have found my goddess. PS: I currently feel like an unevolved monkey from Mount Emei.

Refusing to absorb that alone, he rolled up his sleeves, screenshotted everything, assembled a draft, and set to work bright-eyed. Possibly goaded by her record, possibly wanting everybody to feel the same evolutionary flattening, in that complicated frame of mind he ground away for six hours and had the video finished in one go at two in the morning, which he could not previously have imagined.

Making it, he set Cerulean's history against the dates of Li Lan's papers and patent applications one by one, and found that the company's development had been driven entirely by one person — a human creation engine — and that when Cerulean's early products went on sale she had still been an undergraduate. Which means what? It means that while everybody else was up all night for a pass mark, she was already developing products and running a company.

He uploaded it and went to bed satisfied, with no idea what it would do.

He woke to a phone stuffed with messages, missed calls among them, and a notification that the video was trending.

Opening the site, he found that in the few hours he'd been asleep it had passed two million views, with over ten thousand comments scrolling across it and ten thousand-odd people listed as watching together — and when it played, the comments came at him in a wall and filled the screen.

High energy ahead.

Goddess.

The ceiling of human intelligence.

Beautiful and brilliant — does this person actually exist?

His earlier status had collected a great many replies too, the top one being: Watched the video, back now. Unevolved monkey of Mount Emei.

Count me as a monkey.

+1.

He watched for a while and smiled, satisfied.

---

Walking through the door, Li Lan's first thought was that she'd come to the wrong room. She looked round, saw a good many familiar faces — no, the right room. So what was this? She raised an eyebrow and looked again. A room that normally held thirty or forty students was packed solid, with a number of them standing at the back.

They were all looking at her with unmistakable interest.

She put her textbook down on the desk and looked back at them. "Can somebody tell me what's going on?"

The class monitor stood up. She'd taught them for two months and knew them reasonably well. "Professor, you're trending. They've come to look at you."

A buzz went round, and she smiled. "I don't know the reason, and since you're all in this room, please observe classroom discipline. As for the people at the windows — go to your lectures or go to the library. Don't crowd round the windows."

A student in glasses put up a hand. "Professor, may I ask you a question?"

She checked the time; a few minutes to go. "You may."

He was one of the ones who'd come off the back of the video. "Professor, are you the Li Lan who holds the resveratrol and hydroxy insulin patents?"

She hadn't expected that, and smiled. "With one patent I couldn't be sure. Since you say both together — yes, that's me."

The room said ohh.

Where there had been doubt, hearing it from her settled every rumour at once.

He couldn't help continuing. "And are you Cerulean's shareholder as well?"

She coughed, and gestured for quiet at a room getting steadily louder. "Right. It's time. Let's begin — today we're covering—"

The students waiting for an answer said ah, disappointed, and had not come away with nothing, since she hadn't denied it, which amounts in some measure to confirmation.

Back in her office afterwards she opened her phone to a dozen messages from Li Cheng, which came down to: Li Lan, your business has been exposed and nobody's worked out we're related?

She replied: Noted.

Changed, she found her three students already in the laboratory, huddled over a phone talking quietly.

Luo Pingping saw her first and coughed twice to warn the others, and in the silence that followed the voice from the phone was remarkably loud. "Let's compare and see just how impressive Li Lan is. Cerulean's first product, the Clearhead spray — look at the launch date, the eleventh of the eleventh, 2010, at which point Li Lan was a first-year—"

Liu Ming turned the volume down hurriedly and looked at her, mortified. "Professor…"

Caught watching a video about their own supervisor behind her back, all three could have curled their toes through the floor. They recovered soon enough, the age gap being small and relations outside work relaxed, and Luo Pingping being outgoing. "Professor, is what the video says true?"

Li Lan looked at the three of them and said, expressionlessly, "Mm."

Under the others' brave-warrior gaze, Luo Pingping pressed on. "Professor, have you seen today's trending list?"

Li Lan returned a question. "Have you finished today's experiment?"

That took the wind out of her; she'd got to the laboratory and immediately started watching videos with the other two. "No…"

Liu Ming and Zhao Zhanpeng had already, with excellent judgement, begun busying themselves at her first word. Easygoing as she was outside working hours, she was extremely strict about research.

Busy, they forgot the video entirely — so much so that when she said before leaving that she could take them to see Cerulean's laboratory, they didn't quite take it in.

Luo Pingping recovered and said loudly, "Yes. Thank you, Professor."

---

Li Lan's own business was a footnote. Amid a great deal of anticipation, the first of October arrived.

Besides the people looking forward to a holiday, this year had another group, and a phenomenon: tier-three hospitals in every city were unusually full of people coming about diabetes. By reporters' accounts they were mainly late-stage patients, which is to be expected, since the best insulin on the market can only relieve their suffering.

And whatever the noise online, most people were still doubtful, particularly milder cases; they weren't at the critical point and had time to wait. For the seriously ill there was only one choice.

Interest being so high, a television station arranged a group of patients to make several programmes about the course of their treatment, and the ratings were unexpectedly good — so with the country watching, everybody saw that the effect was pronounced. It didn't even require the full course; by the second month the first cohort had visibly changed.

While everybody was excited about that, Li Lan was worrying about something else.

At the end of December 2019, Luo Pingping noticed her supervisor checking her phone a great deal more often — barely a few times a day before, and now almost hourly — and assumed there was somebody, and was speculating about what sort of person could occupy her supervisor's mind so completely when she saw Li Lan looking at the phone with a very serious face.

This went on for a fortnight, and she remained grave right up to Spring Festival.

Then, after half a month of watching without seeing any news of fever and contagion in Jiangcheng, she let out a breath. Her own butterfly had had an effect after all: the epidemic that had reached the whole world had not appeared. It was the happiest moment she'd had since coming back, and there was nobody she could share it with.

In April, for most people, came a particular month: the first patients to be injected had completed six months of treatment and were cured, with no significant side effects, and the programme even organised full medical examinations for them, whose reports showed everything normal apart from pre-existing conditions.

Beyond the programme's patients, a great many others or their families proved online that they or their relatives had genuinely been cured, some of them weeping over their test reports. Once that spread, the number of people being injected peaked and more diabetics converged on the hospitals — and Cerulean had to announce that supply was insufficient, hydroxy insulin not keeping long and stock being limited, so the seriously ill would be treated first, with normal supply guaranteed within two months.

Patients weren't happy and there was nothing to be done. Look at how the patients abroad envied them; this was a temporary domestic shortage, and abroad only two cities could administer it at all — which led to a number of people flying to China for treatment, while in countries where it hadn't launched people condemned their own governments for the slowness of the process and for murdering diabetics, and next door in Korea a petition for sanctions against the government had already started.

As more and more people were cured, Cerulean's reputation climbed, and so did its share price. In fact, from the announcement that hydroxy insulin could cure diabetes, the price rose fifty per cent in two days and kept climbing, and after the first patients were declared cured it stood at seventy times its starting level, with a market capitalisation over ten billion dollars.

What pushed Li Lan back onto the trending list was her net worth. When the valuation came out, she acquired, besides youngest professor, the title of youngest billionaire — and became the supervisor that pharmacy and chemistry students most wanted.

Because, according to students in her group, a masters student there had at least three thousand a month, doubled on joining a project, and some doctoral students took twenty or thirty thousand — enough to make other students drool. The corresponding fact being that her admissions grew steadily stricter and the places were few, and every year the students below very nearly came to blows over them.

A good many outlets and stations wanted to interview her, but unfortunately she had never appeared publicly and hadn't so much as a Weibo account. Reporters watching the place for a fortnight found that she went to the university and went home, occasionally to Cerulean, and that was all, and gave up after two weeks — chiefly because she was not a celebrity, and once the heat passed nobody much minded.