Cai Lei, former executive of a major company, reveals how ALS diagnosis set him on the path to find a cure, Yang Yang reports.

Two big, bold characters stand firmly on the cover of the book Xiangxin (To Believe), as if written by a swift and resolute hand with a heart of fortitude, in ink that turns from black to the color of blood as it moves to the right.

The preamble on the cover states: "Even in failure, never surrender."

That is how Cai Lei, former vice-president of JD Group, faces amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, which he was diagnosed with in 2019, at the age of 41. The book, published recently, tells vividly the story of his unique battle with this terminal illness.

Born in a small city in Central China's Henan province in 1978, Cai has been profoundly influenced by his father's idea that "one has to fight for himself".

Cai's father, the eldest of seven children born to a poor farmer's family, was a veteran, and applied military-style discipline in the home, urging Cai and his younger brothers to study hard and fight for a better future.

Since the fifth year of primary school, Cai has been getting up before 5 am to run, practice boxing and study English. Highly self-motivated, he pushed himself to finish every examination within half of the set time. In most examinations, he scored full marks, a feat for which he was nicknamed "alien".

Indeed, he was very much interested in science and UFOs, planning to study space physics at Peking University, but his father ordered him against his will to study finance and taxation at the Central University of Finance and Economics. For parents who had lived through poverty, securing a stable job was the most important thing.

After graduating from university, he became a civil servant, and later completed postgraduate studies at CUFE.

He chose to start his career at Samsung's headquarters in Beijing as a tax manager. At 29, he became chief tax manager in China Vanke Co. At the end of 2011, Cai joined JD Group.

One of his most well-known achievements is that at an unusually fast speed, he led his team to develop the first electronic invoice on the Chinese mainland, which helped save tens of millions of dollars for the company every year, and was adopted by many other industries. Wherever he works, he always tries his best to create new value, day and night.

That is why he didn't get married until 40. He met his beloved wife Duan Rui, a beautiful Peking University graduate, through a blind date and asked her to marry him on the second date — again displaying his typical speed. With his son's birth, Cai had an enviable life — until Sept 30, 2019.

The muscle on his left arm had been throbbing for 13 months and after visiting different doctors in Beijing, he was introduced to Fan Dongsheng, a leading ALS expert in China.

That sunny afternoon, sitting in Fan's office, he heard the doctor say: "Then only one explanation remains."

"Am I going to die?" he couldn't help joking, but nobody laughed.

The doctor stared at him sternly. He separated his two hands about 20 centimeters from each other, saying, "this was your original life expectancy". Then his left hand quickly moved toward the right one, almost touching it, and said, "now this is how long it will be".

The world suddenly turned dark for Cai. Things had been moving fast in his life, and now life itself was accelerating. He would have only two to five years to live according to the average life expectancy of ALS patients.

After struggling for a while, he decided to tell his wife about his disease and offered a divorce since they had only been married for a little over one year. At the end of his life, muscles unable to move, he would have to fully rely on his family. He did not want his wife to suffer.

Duan rejected his offer, saying: "To marry someone is to have support when unfortunate things happen and now I am your support."