Cryogenics, a rare practice with no scientific support, has returned to the center of public debate in China after the publication of a report in the weekly Southern Weekly at the beginning of November which reconstructs the first case of cryogenicsation in the country, in 2017. Eight years later, the story of the family of the patient who died and was subsequently cryogenically reopened the controversy and generated a heated debate on social networks on the limits of science and technology. The messages focus on the ethical, legal and emotional dilemmas of the widower’s decision, who still hopes to revive his deceased wife in the future.
Zhan Wenlian, a 48-year-old woman from China’s Shandong province, died in May 2017 from terminal lung cancer diagnosed two years earlier. When doctors confirmed that the disease had entered an irreversible phase, her husband, Gui Junmin, decided to resort to cryopreservation and agreed to preserve his wife’s body after her death with this experimental technique.
As rebuilt Southern WeeklyGui, now 57, learned of cryonics during his wife’s last hospital stay, when he found a brochure from the Yinfeng Institute of Life Sciences, a private institution that was then starting to collaborate with Shandong University’s Qilu Hospital in preliminary tests of very low temperature preservation. Then he offered free procedures to the first volunteers.
After learning this technique, Gui signed a thirty-year agreement with the institute for the preservation of Zhang’s remains. After his clinical death, the center activated the planned protocol and transferred his body to a liquid nitrogen tank, where it has since been stored at around -196ºC.
Zhan’s cryogenics were not unheard of in China. Xinhua reported on the process itself in August 2017, when the Yinfeng Institute announced that it had completed the complete preservation of a human body at freezing temperatures for the first time in the country. Years later, in 2021, several local media reported that Gui had partially reconstructed his personal life with a woman named Wang Chuxia. Gui then stated to The paper that her new partner – who she described as “just a partner” – needed to “understand and accept her attachment to the previous relationship”.
However, the comprehensive report of Southern Weekly brought the issue into the media spotlight once again. The article describes that Gui’s belief that his wife would return to life became the axis of his grief. During the first two years after his death, the widower barely left the house and kept telling himself that Zhan was “just sleeping” and would wake up when science found a cure for cancer. His son also supported him in his decision, which however was opposed by the deceased’s family.
Part of the intense debate that has been generated on Weibo (Chinese Twitter, where around seven million comments accumulate) since the text was published on November 7, is due to Gui’s new declarations on his relationship with his current partner. The widower says that Wang “has not yet entered his heart” and that their relationship has a “rather pragmatic” character.
Some users consider his comments reckless towards Wang, while others argue that having another person in his life is contradictory to the image of devotion towards Zhan that he projected when he decided to cryogenically freeze his body. Thousands of users are also wondering about the legal framework of cryogenics: should a cryopreserved person be considered dead for civil purposes? What would happen if one day we managed to revive him? Is Gui in a polyamorous relationship?
In any case, science is not advancing at the pace Gui and his son dreamed of. Currently it is possible to freeze and revive only microscopic structures, never complete organs. There is no documented case, in any country in the world, of human resuscitation after a cryopreservation process. The cost is also stratospheric. The materials used in an operation of this type alone exceed 25,000 euros at the exchange rate, to which must be added, according to Chinese media, another 5,000 euros per year for maintenance.
