Wan'an's Discovery

At Dio Coffee, Zhang Gongjing, Executive Director of Gou You Institution, introduced Du Tianfeng, President of Wan’an Pharmaceutical, to me, saying that this gentleman is also a doctoral candidate in the Department of Philosophy at Peking University.

But the topic we’re going to talk about isn’t his longtime professional field of literature, nor is it related to philosophy—it’s “gynecological conditions” and a “single product that has been around for seventeen years”—the Sister Shu medical sanitary pads.

During the conversation, Du Tianfeng used himself as a model and, accompanied by vivid gestures, repeatedly explained to us the gynecological issues that working women in various professions often face. He also described how the Sister Shu medical sanitary pads were developed with careful consideration for these typically taboo yet frequently tragic problems—problems that are often difficult to discuss openly but can bring profound sorrow to both the individuals themselves and their families.

To be honest, at first I did feel a bit uncomfortable. But after more than two hours, seeing how deeply engaged he remained, I actually found myself moved in ways I hadn’t expected. Of course, what left an even deeper impression on us was Wan’an Pharmaceutical’s discovery and perseverance:

Every year, tens of millions of yuan are invested in the nationwide public welfare activity of “Health Education Lectures for Female Employees,” a commitment that has been maintained for over a decade.

For the past seventeen years, despite focusing on just one single product, we haven't only avoided falling behind in market competition—we've actually become increasingly strong.

Wanan Pharmaceutical has redirected its advertising budget—originally earmarked for heavy, high-impact marketing campaigns—to charitable causes. Relying solely on the revenue generated by a single product to sustain this long-term initiative, Wanan has ultimately established its own industry standards and brand image—a feat that is truly unparalleled among pharmaceutical companies.

Do you understand your own body?

The public welfare activity—“Health Education Lectures for Female Employees” organized by Wan’an Pharmaceutical—has reached extensively and deeply into 37,080 enterprises, institutions, and government agencies, spanning across all 31 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the central government nationwide. This includes 264 prefecture-level cities, 15 autonomous regions, 25 autonomous prefectures, three leagues, 803 municipal districts, 362 county-level cities, and 1,253 counties (banners).

Perhaps from the perspective of the fiercely competitive pharmaceutical and healthcare products market, a public welfare initiative lasting such a long time might seem somewhat risky. However, Wan’an Pharmaceutical is not “fighting alone.” First and foremost, those who remain deeply committed to this public welfare initiative led by Wan’an are the team of expert lecturers, most of whom are retired medical and health professionals.

Out of professional vigilance as a media professional, Zhang Gongjing led his colleagues from Gouyou Agency on a special trip to Xi'an and other locations to conduct surveys among the experts who had participated in the “Health Education Lectures for Female Employees” as well as among the relevant beneficiaries. Speaking about why they chose to personally interview these individuals, Zhang Gongjing said, “I met General Manager Du at a conference, and I heard he’s in the medical field. To be honest, I was a bit apprehensive at first.”

“What touched us most deeply—and moved us the most—were those elderly ladies,” Zhang Gongjing recalled. Many of them, after sharing their stories once or twice, found it still wasn’t enough and kept going, because so many female employees needed their specialized knowledge. Among them was Jin Yulan, a 68-year-old woman who had previously served as a professor at the Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Medical University and as the head of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department at the Xi'an Maternal and Child Health Hospital. She’d already emigrated to the United States with her son. Even after moving to America, she continued giving lectures on women’s health—but not just for fun. She told us emphatically, “I’ll come back to give more lectures when I’m done here, because I feel that’s where my true value lies.” Then she turned to us and asked in return, “Look, my children are all in the U.S. What kind of life would I have there? Would I really come back just for the money?”

“Some women ask questions that are bizarre and unusual—someone who knows gynecology would find these questions ridiculously simple; with just a little bit of attention, so much suffering could be avoided,” Professor Jin Yulan said, visibly shocked by her own discovery.

After retiring from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Xi'an Municipal Maternal and Child Health Hospital, Professor Jin Yulan became an expert for Wan’an Pharmaceutical’s free knowledge lectures by sheer chance. Over the past decade, those who have attended Professor Jin Yulan’s lectures have included civil servants from central government ministries and commissions, farmwomen from remote mountain villages, highly educated doctoral students, and even rural women who hadn’t even completed primary school. Profoundly saddened, Professor Jin Yulan has observed that Chinese women from different social classes and backgrounds share one common trait: “a complete lack of self-awareness.”

“Some highly educated women don’t know much more about self-care than peasant women living in remote mountain villages—and this is no joke!” One incident that Professor Jin Yulan remembers vividly is from several years ago, when, after giving a lecture in northern Shaanxi, a female civil servant approached her for advice on a related issue. What surprised and deeply moved the civil servant was that she’d been grappling with this problem for years without realizing it: “She’s been married for many years now, yet they still haven’t had any children—not because she can’t conceive, but simply because the couple’s approach to family planning has been completely wrong. And this has already caused her serious emotional and psychological harm.”

If you want to understand how Chinese women often fail to understand themselves, just take a look at the consultation sessions that follow health and wellness lectures for female employees—the scene is truly lively. Each lecture lasts 1.5 hours, yet the subsequent consultations often drag on for two or three hours. Female employees have so many questions that the professors are frequently surrounded by an eager crowd, unable to leave the classroom until the very last female employee has gone. Indeed, many even continue their consultations—or even seek medical treatment—at the experts’ homes.

In our country, due to the influence of traditional beliefs and the exam-oriented education system, comprehensive education on reproductive health has long been a missing link. Although people’s attitudes have begun to shift in recent years, there is still a long way to go before we can achieve a complete transformation. According to Professor Jin, promoting women’s health knowledge is a daunting yet far-reaching task.

Caring for women’s health is a national obligation.

Having run a public-interest lecture series for over a decade, it’s inevitable that some people might question whether it’s just a form of conference marketing. But Du Tianfeng frankly admits that no company can escape the pressure of market sales. Wan’an Pharmaceutical, however, has chosen a different path: “For the sake of these experts, I have to keep this lecture series going. These experts are truly passionate about what they do—you simply can’t afford to cut corners or be insincere. If you try to fudge things even a little bit, these experts won’t put up with it.”

The predecessor of Wan’an Pharmaceutical was a military-industrial enterprise, primarily engaged in the production and export of raw pharmaceutical materials. After the shareholding reform in 1993, the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry—especially in Shaanxi Province—was booming nationwide. Wan’an Pharmaceutical decided to bring together its core research personnel and technical expertise from medical institutions such as the Shaanxi Provincial Institute for Drug Control, to tackle a key research project: how to prevent gynecological diseases. As a result, they developed medical products that not only improve patients’ quality of life, demonstrate excellent efficacy, act quickly, and are free from toxic side effects, but also sell well and help elevate the overall R&D standards of the industry.

“At the time, the entry barrier for this industry was very low—seemingly any company with sufficient funds could enter. But we set a very high goal for ourselves,” said Du Tianfeng. “Our slogan is: Caring for women’s health is a national duty; by safeguarding one woman’s health, we also strengthen an entire family.”

After successfully developing the sister Shu medical sanitary pads, Wan’an Pharmaceutical spent three years—from 1995 to the end of 1998—advertising and selling them using traditional methods, and the market response was quite positive. This is because the product “not only has therapeutic effects, but also plays a supportive role in treatment and helps prevent and regulate women’s health.”

The impetus for Wan’an Pharmaceutical to finally decide to allocate its advertising budget to public welfare lectures stemmed from the worrying state of women’s health and hygiene that they uncovered during their market research.

“In those days, the massive pharmaceutical advertisements first did one thing: they made the general public perceive gynecological or male diseases as ‘very frightening,’” said Du Tianfeng. “Meanwhile, hospitals simply didn’t have the time or energy to educate patients about these conditions.”

When a woman who “doesn’t even know what the attachment is or where it’s located” finally gathers the courage to go to the hospital for a checkup, what she often hears from the doctor is a scolding: “How could you be so careless and end up in this state!” Meanwhile, the patient’s spouse or family members tend to view such an incident as something “shameful and embarrassing.”

In its market research, Wan’an Pharmaceutical discovered that many tragic family breakdowns and even loss of life were caused by what initially seemed like simple gynecological conditions. The deeper the investigation went, the more problems were uncovered. Not only adult women suffer from gynecological ailments; due to poor hygiene practices, even very young children often face similar issues.

Du Tianfeng still feels deeply saddened by the ordeal of a little girl. At the time, the girl was just over two years old. Her parents had mixed her socks in with the laundry when doing the wash, and as a result, she contracted athlete’s foot. Being so young and unaware, the child often scratched the affected area with her hands. Her parents were extremely worried and rushed her to doctors everywhere, spending a great deal of money in the process. However, most conventional medications are designed from a therapeutic perspective and struggle to reach the site of the injury. Moreover, these medications often have significant side effects, and some are even unsuitable for children. In the end, it was Wan’an Pharmaceutical’s medical protective pads that successfully cured the little girl’s condition.

In China, due to the influence of traditional beliefs and the structure of the education system, education on reproductive health has long been a weak area. This has resulted in a lack of knowledge about women’s physiological hygiene, which has become a major contributing factor to the high incidence of gynecological diseases in our country. To address this issue, Shaanxi Wan’an Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. launched a public welfare initiative—the “Health Education Lectures for Female Employees”—across the country starting in 1998. Since then, these public lectures have never ceased. Even today, more than 30 lecture teams are still actively traveling around the country each month; at their peak, some teams may give over 50 lectures in a single month. Because this initiative is highly targeted and well-received by grassroots trade union organizations and female workers alike, it has become an important measure through which trade unions deliver practical and meaningful assistance to female employees.

When this initiative was first launched, Wan’an Company established three strict guidelines internally: 1. The speakers must be qualified and reputable experts; 2. The content of the lectures must be solid and well-founded; 3. While products may be showcased, disguised sales pitches are strictly prohibited. It is precisely these three guidelines that have been the primary reason why grassroots trade unions have consistently and enthusiastically cooperated over the years, and why Wan’an Pharmaceutical has remained eager and committed to continuously advancing this initiative.

At nearly every lecture, Wan’an provides a detailed “Feedback Record Form.” This form includes handwritten comments and suggestions from female employees and union officials who have attended the lecture, as well as signatures from union officials. At Wan’an Pharmaceutical Company, there is a dedicated archive room specifically for storing these feedback forms. “Through conducting this lecture, I’ve become even more determined to encourage our female employees in the prefecture to work hard, make greater contributions, put down roots in Xinjiang, and help build Xinjiang. This will undoubtedly play a positive role in promoting social harmony in our prefecture,” wrote a cadre from the All-China Federation of Trade Unions of Bortala Mongol Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang.

Over the past decade, Wan’an Pharmaceutical has invested over 100 million yuan in this public welfare project. Du Tianfeng, President of Wan’an Pharmaceutical, said: “In the beginning, we could have used this money to place advertisements in the media, but instead we chose to focus on public welfare projects. Everyone who has attended our lectures knows that our company is genuinely committed to doing practical things, and naturally gains confidence in our products. We believe this approach is more solid and reliable than simply running ads.”

Today, Wan’an Pharmaceutical has been running the public welfare initiative “Health Education Lectures for Female Employees” for over a decade. Nationwide, it has held 112,167 lecture sessions, reaching more than 5 million direct attendees and conservatively estimated to have benefited over 10 million people indirectly. The initiative is highly popular among female workers. Due to its exceptionally long duration, extensive number of events, and broad reach among female employees, this public welfare effort is rare in China’s philanthropic landscape in recent years and has been recognized as “China’s Most Persistent Public Welfare Initiative.”