Love beyond Borders

By staff reporter CHEN JUN

In a speech delivered at Seoul National University in the Republic of Korea on July 4, 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping told a story about a bone marrow donor. Zhang Bao is a Chinese volunteer donor whose blood sample matched that of a South Korean leukemia patient. After recovering from a car accident, he kept his promise to donate his bone marrow to the patient.

“Fate is unpredictable. It’s not a big deal to lend a hand when others are suffering,” Xi said, quoting Zhang’s words. The president said that of the 156 foreign patients who received Chinese bone marrow, 45 were South Korean – far surpassing the number from other countries. “Moving stories like this can be found everywhere, demonstrating the friendship between the Chinese and Korean peoples,” Xi concluded.

The bone marrow collection took place at Beijing Daopei Hospital on January 14, 2010.

From Blood Donor to Bone Marrow Donor

Zhang Bao, 33 years old, heads the Huainan branch of Jiangsu Jiuding Global Construction Technology Group Co., Ltd. He studied at the Wuhan Institute of Shipbuilding Technology in Hubei and began working in the city after graduation. But in 2008, he returned to his hometown Huainan in Anhui Province to start a business with his uncle Su Yi.

We met in Zhang’s tidy, well-lit office, and my first impression was of a calm and simple person. Su Yi says his nephew “works much but talks little.”

Zhang Bao has donated blood 15 times, he said, amounting to six liters in total. It started in the spring of 2001. One day Zhang encountered a mobile blood donation station while on the street with his schoolmates in Wuhan. “I didn’t do it on purpose at first. I just often heard that blood banks run dry every now and then and there are people in emergencies who need blood badly,” Zhang said about his first time giving blood. “I was a freshman at that time and did not have much money to help others. But I could use my blood to help those in need, with no harm to my health. So, why not?”

In the following years he donated blood every semester. It became a part of his life even after graduation.

One day in 2005, Zhang Bao donated blood as he often did at a station in Wuhan. But this time he went further, and filled out an application volunteering to donate hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). In May 2008, the Korean Marrow Donor Program (KMDP) sought help from the Chinese Marrow Donor Program (CMDP) for a Korean patient. The patient had suffered from leukemia for six years and needed an HSCs transplant to save his life. Out of 1.1 million volunteer donors registered with CMDP, Zhang Bao was the only one with matching bone marrow.

Zhang Bao admitted that he was a little worried about donating when approached by CMDP workers. “Because I had no idea what it really meant. Before that, I just heard of that marrow punctures were quite painful,” Zhang explained. He then did some research about marrow donation and his uncle consulted doctors. CMDP staff also explained the bone marrow harvest procedures. Learning that the surgery would do little harm to his health, Zhang finally decided to donate.