Would you give up your US green card, your job in Yale University, and your high income? I think many of you might say no. But Dong Ziming, a 45 year-old Chinese man, gave up all these things ten years ago and went back to China.

Dong was born in a poor family of practitioners of Chinese medicine in Henan. He went to the US in 1988 as a visiting scholar after graduating from his Henan medical University. He still sighs with great feeling when he speaks of his days in the US. “I spent day and night doing research at that time.”

The hard life never daunted him. Dong Ziming later served as a visiting professor in Columbia University, Cornell University and Yale University. In 1988, he made the unexpected decision to give up the job in Yale University and come back to China. “I decided to come back to China when I knew my mother was fighting cancer,” says Dong.

He has now become the head of basic medicine school of Zhengzhou University and the chemoprevention project that he heads up is making progress.

“What I really want is that ordinary Chinese people can live a healthy life,” says Dong. He has been striving for this simple goal for several decades while engaged in scientific research and writing academic papers.

“My grandfather always taught me to do good deeds,” he says. “I keep this instruction in mind as I work hard to reduce the suffering of ordinary Chinese people.”

Dong Ziming explains that cancer is not necessarily incurable. He adds that if proper measures are taken to prevent cancer, cancer can be a controllable disease. Chemoprevention is a way to prevent or alleviate cancer by using natural compounds. Dong hopes to reduce the morbidity of cancer by one third.

“Ordinary people lack a clear understanding of cancer,” Dong Ziming observes. “But we believe that with as society develops, people will become more aware that cancer can be cured.”

The article is edited and translated from《耶鲁走出的抗癌追梦者》, source: People's Daily Overseas Edition, author: Wang Xueting