The brains of the operation

Zhang Hongqi undertakes a full surgical schedule and his clinic is always packed with outpatients, most of whom wait months to consult the eminent surgeon. [Photo by Wang Jing/China Daily]

The Chinese Dream | Zhang Hongqi

As China makes good on President Xi's promise to dispatch medical teams to the Caribbean, we meet the man leading the charge.

Although he's one of China's best known and most respected neurosurgeons, Zhang Hongqi, who works at the Xuanwu Hospital in Beijing, is a remarkably modest, amiable and patient man.

On Wednesday, the 44-year-old traveled to the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago as head of a 10-strong team that will provide medical services in the Caribbean island nation for six months.

However, the week before he left Beijing, Zhang undertook a full surgical schedule and his clinic was packed with outpatients, most of whom had been waiting at least three months to consult the eminent surgeon, who performed more than 600 neurological or spinal operations last year. "About 70 percent of our patients are transferred from other hospitals," he says.

During high school, Zhang was deeply interested in biology, and gradually came to believe that the human body is the most complex organism on the planet. "After four years' undergraduate study of basic medicine at the Peking University Health Science Center, I discovered that the human nervous system is extremely sophisticated. There are so many intriguing unknowns in this branch of medicine that I long to study and explore."