Chapter 53

Peking University, natural medicinal chemistry laboratory.

A group in white coats sat around the meeting table, with a man approaching sixty at the head — Professor Lin, one of the department's senior professors — and several more along the wall with paper and pens, ready to take notes.

"Everyone's here, so let's begin. Xiao Zhang, where has your project got to?"

The man on his right nodded, handed round a sheaf of papers and spoke fluently. "These are our results to date on calendula's hydrating and soothing effects. The results show that after three rounds of purification of the principal active compounds, the soothing effect is forty per cent better than before and hydration twenty per cent better — well beyond what the client company originally specified. I think we can invite them in to close the project."

Professor Lin went through the procedure and the results carefully, nodded with approval, and then identified a problem. "The results are very satisfactory. But three rounds of purification is cumbersome, Xiao Zhang. There should be a better way."

Xiao Zhang hesitated. "Professor, we've under two months to the closing date. Starting the experiments again might not fit."

The client was a long-established American cosmetics brand, built on natural essential oils and ointments derived from herbs, which had gradually blended cosmetics, herbalism and medicine into a distinctive identity and did well abroad.

Preparing to enter the Chinese market in recent years, and although they had their own formulation team, they had last year contracted four or five top university laboratories across the country in order to understand Chinese skin better — Peking's natural medicinal chemistry laboratory among them, with the calendula toner.

Professor Lin thought about it. "True enough. In that case, stay behind after the meeting and take me through the details, and we'll see whether anything can be improved."

"Yes, Professor."

The reports that followed all attracted some criticism, though those teams weren't pressed for time and could comfortably start another round on the professor's advice.

Afterwards the others dispersed and only the calendula team stayed. A project naturally involves more than one person: the professor set direction and gave advice, and under Dr Zhang there were two postgraduates and two undergraduates, of whom Li Lan was one.

Walking, Dr Zhang described his procedure, and stuck when he reached the data. A poor pen beats a good memory, and there was rather a lot of it.

"Xiao Lan, what were our figures last time?"

Li Lan answered without hesitating. "Besides water, five components for hydration and five for soothing and anti-inflammatory action. For hydration, the carotenoid compounds from the calendula make up the largest share, then glycerine—"

As the string of terms came out, Professor Lin, walking ahead, was surprised. None of it was especially hard to remember, but keeping it precisely straight takes some effort.

"Li Lan, you remember figures at that level of detail?" She sat in on one of his courses and had joined his laboratory the previous year, so he knew her reasonably well.

"That's right, Professor. Li Lan is a walking prompt sheet — she saves me a great deal of looking through notes," said Dr Zhang, smiling. He had the procedure and the principal figures clear enough; recalling every data point was rather much to ask.

"Good. Don't waste an aptitude like that. Keep at it." He said it kindly. The two postgraduates thought nothing of it; the other undergraduate glanced at Li Lan with some envy. So she had a good memory. What was there to show off about? Girls being girls. Frivolous.

---

At the laboratory Professor Lin went through Dr Zhang's procedure in detail. It had to be said that Dr Zhang's knowledge was broad and he was a theorist of the classic type: every step reasoned and supported — and precisely because every step was so thoroughly supported, the whole was somewhat rigid and elaborate.

He considered it for a while, and instead of giving a specific opinion turned to the other four. "You've all been on this project some time. If you have other ideas, say so."

Beyond research, teaching was part of his job, and rather than telling them what to do he preferred to indicate a direction and leave the rest to them.

Anyone who gets into Peking University has something about them. One postgraduate collected himself and offered his idea; the professor only nodded, without evaluating it, and Dr Zhang smiled. Seeing that, the second postgraduate, unwilling to be outdone, offered his, and got the same response.

Both were left uneasy. Neither the professor's face nor Dr Zhang's gave anything away. Had they been right or wrong?

That wasn't the end of it. He turned to Li Lan and the other undergraduate, encouragingly. "You two may give your views as well. Don't worry about being wrong."

The other undergraduate, unwilling to be upstaged again, spoke first. "Professor, let me." It has to be said that for all his eagerness to shine, he had something to him, and the method he described sounded reasonable enough.

He finished and looked hopefully at the professor, and was disappointed to find both faces unchanged.

Last was Li Lan, who thought about it. "Dr Zhang is using solvent extraction — dissolving the oils in a solvent and then separating them. But that approach—"

On research Li Lan was another person entirely, and could talk at length. Both men nodded along, thinking the same thing: Li Lan was the one who genuinely understood the whole procedure. The earlier students had offered ideas, but each from a single point.

Which is not to say their views were useless. On the contrary — the theory they'd raised, Dr Zhang had calculated during the preliminary stage. The postgraduates' points were reasonable enough: the outcome might not match the current results, but they were workable. The other undergraduate's was purely theoretical and barely practicable at all.

Listening to Li Lan, the two postgraduates understood the procedure a great deal better. There were steps they had simply performed on instruction without knowing what they were for, and hearing her explain, they felt rather embarrassed about their own suggestions. Quite so: anything obvious to them could hardly have escaped Dr Zhang.

Having described the procedure, Li Lan turned. "Though if it were me, I'd probably use simple distillation."

That interested Professor Lin. "Why? Extraction gives a higher-purity product."

"Calendula is a biennial of the daisy family—" and she was away again.

What she was describing was the shop's method for the calendula toner, and being entirely unlike current practice it caught his interest — which at his level is not easily caught by novelty.

Students are told to innovate, and most student innovation is a consequence of too narrow a reading: innovation within the boundary of what they happen to know. By his stage one understands that most of it has been studied in some corner already, and is often outdated and discarded.

That doesn't mean nobody innovates. There is never a shortage of talent, and small as this toner project was, he caught in her account a genuine smell of it.

The other undergraduate, watching his face, noticed the change and, provoked, interrupted her. "Li Lan, you're a first-year sitting in. You've read too little. Solvent extraction is the recognised, most efficient method for calendula. The distillation you're describing was only popular in medieval Europe and was replaced by extraction as the technology advanced."

Nothing was said outright, but nobody who gets into Peking University is stupid, and everyone understood: she was showing off, hadn't read enough, and was passing fish eyes off as pearls.

Professor Lin addressed him severely. "I said we would hear everyone's views, right or wrong. Don't interrupt people."

The boy was embarrassed and angry and didn't dare answer, and his mouth moved without producing anything.

Without looking at him, the professor turned back to Li Lan encouragingly. "Go on. That student is quite right that distillation for calendula was only in fashion for a period — but no knowledge is absolute, and I find your thinking genuinely original. Say more, if you don't mind."

She didn't mind.

"—so distillation not only produces a better effect, it retains calendula's natural scent, which saves the trouble of adding fragrance."

She finished, and both men fell to thinking, plainly testing the proposal in their heads.

Some minutes later the professor looked up first and clapped her shoulder, smiling. "The young make heroes. I've considered distilling calendula myself, but your version is plainly better — and you've laid it out too fluently for theory alone. Bring me your experimental records."

A professor being a professor: he could tell from her account that she had more than theory.

Dr Zhang was surprised. "Li Lan hasn't run any experiments, surely?" By the rules, only formal researchers may use the laboratory's materials freely.

The other undergraduate's eyes lit, and he was about to say she had been using the equipment in breach of the rules when Li Lan said, smiling, "I've run several at home. The records are in the notebook at my desk."

The professor plainly couldn't wait, and wouldn't even sit through her fetching it. "Where do you sit? Let's go and look."

---

"On these results, hydration goes up by forty per cent and soothing by fifty?" Dr Zhang said, reading, surprised.

He had reason to be. Compared with his own product, hers improved soothing by a further ten per cent and hydration by forty — double his own twenty.

This is nothing, Li Lan thought. Those figures had earned twenty per cent completion in the shop; what the formulation could actually do was far beyond this. Not that she could produce it, so there was no point saying so.

"Good, very good." The professor finished reading, delighted. "Xiao Zhang, you've two months. I think you might try Li Lan's method next."

Then he turned to all of them. "I asked for your views just now, and I'm glad every one of you had your own. There is no right and wrong in scholarship, and you should keep that attitude."

He affirmed their courage in speaking, then identified the flaw in each proposal, at which the two postgraduates saw it — somewhat embarrassed at having brandished a blade in front of the master, and pleased to be commended all the same.

The greatest gain, though, was Li Lan's. With her method endorsed, the next stage was to validate it, and whatever the outcome she had gone from a person who recorded data and might as easily not have been there to somebody of consequence on the project.

A week later, Dr Zhang looked at the test results with delight. "Li Lan, your method has worked. The product performs better than your own figures, and the procedure is considerably simpler. That's a perfect answer delivered."

Unlike his excitement, Li Lan looked at the shop's verdict — L1 calendula hydrating toner, completion 25% — and her mouth twitched. All those experiments at home, using calendula raised by the shop's own method, a month of hard work for twenty per cent. This time with ordinary calendula. Some of it was better equipment, and doing it with Dr Zhang — but the gap was absurd. With ordinary calendula at home she'd managed ten per cent, fifteen at best. A difference of fifteen points.

She would have liked to attribute it entirely to poor equipment at home. She knew the real reason was that she wasn't good enough.

Unwelcome as it was, the truth is generally depressing.