Lei Jufang: A Scientific Spirit with the Heart of a Bodhisattva

　　Thirty-one years later, on the 7th floor of Building D, Yeqing Building, No. 9 Wangjing North Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, Lei Jufang sat across from me. Recalling the moment she decided to step out of the system and start her own business, she felt that she had been somewhat idealistic—and even reckless.

　　“If I were to evaluate it using today’s risk-control standards, I think I’d have given up. Back then, I made the choice rather impulsively and under relatively ideal circumstances. Of course, once you’ve made a choice, there’s no turning back—you just have to keep pushing forward with all your might,” she said.

　　Lei Jufang is the Chairperson, founder, and de facto controller of Qizheng Tibetan Medicine Co., Ltd. In 1987, as China’s intellectual landscape underwent a wave of ideological liberation and scientific and technological personnel surged onto the main battlefield of the national economy, 34-year-old senior engineer Lei Jufang decided to take a leave of absence from her position at the Lanzhou Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and venture into entrepreneurship.

　　Along this journey, full of ups and downs, 31 years have flown by in the blink of an eye. Lei Jufang ventured into the Tibetan region, delving deep into the treasure trove of Tibetan medicine. Leveraging modern technology to refine traditional secret recipes, she launched the blockbuster product “Qizheng Pain-Relieving Plaster.” Under her leadership, Qizheng Tibetan Medicine has not only expanded beyond the Tibetan region but has also reached across China and entered the capital market.

　　Once her achievements were recognized and she was showered with accolades, Lei Jufang was no exception. “National People’s Congress Deputy,” “Member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference,” “Outstanding Private Entrepreneur,” “Richest Person in Tibet,” “Top Performer in Poverty Alleviation,” “Outstanding Socialist Builder”... one honor after another left one dazzled and overwhelmed.

　　Under the halo of fame, Lei Jufang remains true to herself. Facing the camera, she appears with her bare face and silver hair, wearing a Chinese-style cross-front top in linen with a longevity-character pattern, paired with wide, black trousers. She speaks softly about those events from years past—neither joyful nor sorrowful.

　　The engineer’s gene and scientific spirit still flow in her veins. Everyone throughout the company has gotten used to calling her “Engineer Lei.”

　　Looking back to the early days of our venture, we couldn't afford equipment costing several million yuan per unit. Lei Jufang asked her colleagues for help and built one herself—spending just over 100,000 yuan—and applied the vacuum freeze-drying process to pain-relief plaster patches. The experiment was a success, greatly enhancing the portability of these patches. As a result, even after long-distance transportation and prolonged storage, the active ingredients in the medicinal herbs remain remarkably stable.

　　Tibetan medicine and Tibetan pharmaceuticals are renowned for their remarkable efficacy, and there are many intriguing tales about them circulating outside Tibet. However, to truly benefit more people, we still need to overcome numerous cultural and psychological barriers. This is precisely what Lei Jufang has been pondering deeply, hoping to achieve a breakthrough. She believes that for Tibetan medicine and traditional Chinese medicine to gain international recognition and be widely accepted, the key lies in standardization, verifiability, and reproducibility.

　　“First and foremost, safety—we need to ensure that our doctors and our consumers know it’s safe. Second, we also need to demonstrate not only that it’s safe but also highly effective. We must clearly explain, using the language of modern medicine and scientific experiments, exactly how it works. Then, once people try it and understand the underlying principles, they’ll no longer have any psychological barriers,” she said.

　　Therefore, no matter how long or difficult the process of evidence-based medicine may be, we must persist on this path. Some people complain that the advantages of Tibetan medicine have yet to be recognized by the outside world. But Lei Jufang doesn't see it that way. She says, “Good things can’t be suppressed forever. Just like a luminous pearl—you’ve got to polish it yourself. We’re willing to blaze a trail and prove its worth through rigorous testing and validation. Don’t expect to find a marketing expert who’ll pull off some magical trick and instantly trigger explosive growth. Such a thing might happen once in a while, but it won’t last. What really matters is for everyone to know about it, to feel its benefits firsthand, to experience its effectiveness—that’s the only path to lasting success.”

　　Lei Jufang shared a story about how the company once made bricks “without a license.” In the 1990s, the company set up a factory in Linzhi. At the time, local transportation was inconvenient, and transporting bricks from inland regions would have been extremely costly. So “Engineer Lei” spent just over 30,000 yuan to buy a brick-making machine. By using cement and other materials, they were able to produce bricks themselves, cutting costs by as much as 80%. Later, when the company built another factory in Yuzhong, Gansu Province, they hauled that same brick-making machine over there as well.

　　“Some places probably need to have their floor tiles replaced every three or four years, because after a long time, cracks start to appear. But the tiles we made ourselves—twenty years have passed already—and they’re still laid out there, in perfect condition. It really gives me pause for thought. In fact, people need to have a certain spirit, and so do enterprises—especially those in manufacturing—because it’s crucial to embody the craftsman’s spirit in every single step and every single detail,” she said.

　　In addition to craftsmanship and a scientific spirit, Lei Jufang also possesses another quality—benevolent compassion and a desire to do good for others.

　　In 1995, Linzhi in Tibet was still a place with inconvenient transportation and few investors. Lei Jufang followed the Guangcai Initiative to the region, where a county magistrate pulled her along for an overnight inspection tour—offering toasts and even inviting her to dance. Softening at his earnestness, without giving it much thought, she decided to set up a factory there. She hired some disabled workers as well as many local residents to work at the factory, thereby changing the destinies of countless people. Later, she unexpectedly discovered that the very site where the factory was built had been chosen 1,300 years ago by Yutuo Yuan Dan Gongbu, the great Tibetan physician and sage, who had designated it as a base for preserving, researching, and teaching Tibetan medicine.

　　Lei Jufang has donated funds to establish a traditional Tibetan medicine school and is supporting five other traditional Tibetan medicine schools in providing medical training, cultivating Tibetan medical practitioners and enabling them to go to remote areas to provide medical care. She hopes that through this approach, the invaluable treasures of traditional Tibetan medicine can be passed down to future generations.

　　If an employee falls seriously ill and the portion not covered by medical insurance is fully paid by the company, the company will also provide a certain percentage of assistance to the employee’s immediate family members if they suffer from a serious illness.

　　“I really look down on those managers who take the opportunity to fire employees simply because they’re sick. That’s immoral and creates a huge karmic debt,” said Lei Jufang.

　　Not long ago, more than 100 villagers from Niba Village, Lingka Township, Baxiu County, Chamdo City, Tibet, wrote a letter to express their gratitude to Lei Jufang for purchasing nearly 20,000 jin of wild walnuts from their village. Niba Village is located in a remote area with difficult transportation access, yet Lei Jufang has been helping the villagers sell their walnuts for four consecutive years. The villagers affectionately call her “Walnut Amala.”

　　As the interview drew to a close and I stepped out of the somewhat crowded office of “Hetao Amala,” I glanced back and noticed that on the wall directly opposite the doorway hung a yellow khata, a red auspicious knot, and a painting of the Ten-Phases of Freedom. This scene naturally brought to mind today’s world—riddled with divisions and suffering everywhere. Isn’t it precisely what we need, like Lei Jufang, who combines the compassionate heart of a bodhisattva with the spirit of science, to concoct a soothing balm that can heal rifts and alleviate pain?

　　(The author is the Executive Deputy Editor-in-Chief of this newspaper.)

　　Reporting media: Securities Times

　　Report link: http://company.stcn.com/2019/0108/14785159.shtml