Although nearly a year has passed, Fumin Zhang, professor of College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, still remembers that day clearly, Nov. 20, 2019. He made an appointment with Songqing Liu, a senior engineer at State Key Laboratory of Applied Organic Chemistry, to test the samples on that morning. However strangely enough, Liu stood him up.

After many inquiries, Zhang found that Liu was hospitalized. He hurried to the hospital to visit, finding Liu being in a coma. Zhang learned that Liu had been fighting cancer for a year and five months from choke with sobs of his lover, Mrs. Hui Duan. Looking at the painful expression on Liu's face, Zhang was shocked and amazed. Zhang was also deeply guilty. His colleague had been ill for more than a year, but he did not even know it.

What made Zhang even more sad was that about two hours after his leaving, Liu closed his eyes forever, at the age of 54. "Bad news, shock, disbelief..."

Hearing the news of Liu's death, colleagues, students, relatives and friends were all shocked. They all thought that the next day they would surely see Liu dressed neatly, walking on cloth shoes and shuttling among the instruments. 

“Taking samples every day is not an easy job.” 

In 1965, Liu was born in Longhui, Hunan province. Though his family was poor when he was in childhood, but he was eager to learn. In 1983, Liu was admitted to Chemistry Department of Lanzhou University from western Hunan to northwestern China, where he spent 36 years. In the eyes of his friends and family, Liu is full of wit who liked to write, sing and play the guitar. However, the key words in his 54 years were "nuclear magnetism" and "testing samples".

In 2000, Liu Songqing was transferred from Coating Industry Research Institute of the Ministry of Chemical Industry to SKLAOC of Lanzhou University, responsible for the management and testing of 400M and 600M NMR.

Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), known as the "eye of organic chemistry", has been widely used in the identification of organic compound structures, the monitoring of reaction dynamics, the interaction between molecules and other fields. It is an essential large instrument in teaching and research work.

SKLAOC has totally 7 NMR spectrometers, and 8-hour working time per day obviously cannot meet the testing needs of teachers and students. Therefore Liu and his colleagues explored open management mode. It made teachers and students test on computers by themselves through online appointment system, which made a 24-hour nuclear magnetic testing possible.

The open management mode greatly improves instrument working efficiency and is beneficial to teachers and students, but it also brings a lot of "trouble" to Liu Songqing.

Students are not familiar with NMR, so equipment often breaks down due to wrong operation. Hence Liu and his colleagues held training courses regularly, explaining the operation, data processing, common problems and maintenance methods of the instrument to students systematically.

All seven devices operate 24 hours a day in a year, unless power is cut off. The lab's NMR is kept at full capacity for years on end, and Liu and his colleagues also escorted 24-hour equipment operation.

Among the seven devices, one 600M NMR was expensive and complicated to operate, which was not open to students at that time. Liu was responsible for the management and operation of this device. In order to improve efficiency, overtime testing samples in the evenings, weekends and holidays has become Liu's routine.

Associate professor Jianjun Chen ever asked Liu to test a nuclear magnetism data of a sample only 0.8 milligram. Because the sample amount is small, so test time is longer and it is difficult to get a result. It was just before the May Day holiday. In order not to delay the students' sample testing, Liu Songqing made use of his holiday time to go to the laboratory for constant debugging of relevant parameters and finally got satisfactory results.

Recalling this incident, Chen felt deeply: "Everyone thought that the job of an experimental technology teacher is just to take samples every day. In fact, it is not easy to do this job well!"

 “Reliability and punctuality are his labels." 

Liu is usually quiet and amiable. At the mention of him, teachers and students think of "reliability" and "punctuality" first.

No matter who, whether teacher or student, asked Liu for help, he never shirked. Even at 10 p.m., when students called to say something was wrong with equipment, Mr. Liu would get dressed and headed to the lab. His wife, Hui Duan, concerned about his body, advised him to turn off his cell phone for a rest. However, Liu said, "Students took the test overnight, and if anything went wrong, the whole night would be wasted."

In order to support the scientific research work well, Liu also actively participated in several programs. In 2013, Liu took part in a program at the provincial and ministerial level called the construction of NMR Demonstration units (CERS), and undertook operation and training work. In 2014, he participated in shooting Open Nuclear Magnetic Training Video to help teachers and students carry out NMR detection technology more efficiently through visual operation tutorials. In 2015, he played a role in CERS Management Center's NMR foundation and application training program based on Lanzhou University. In 2017, he participated in the decoration work of the magnetic hall of Lanzhou University, successfully completed instrument protection, gas pipeline laying, ceiling reconstruction and installation of air conditioning and fresh air system without moving, lowering the field or breaking the temperature of several superconducting magnets, and created the model for the decoration of the NMR instrument laboratory of domestic universities.

With the efforts of Liu and his colleagues, the equipment in the laboratory is running normally and the testing efficiency is improving constantly. Meanwhile the data collected are true and reliable and the scientific research achievements of the College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering are also harvesting steadily.

Recalling Liu Songqing, Shu Xingzhong, secretary of Organic Chemistry Branch, said, "Without experimental technical support personnel like Liu, our scientific research would not have been carried out!"

As early as May 2018, Liu had been feeling unwell. However, in order not to delay his work, he didn't go to hospital until summer vacation in August to have a check-up - a 10cm tumor in his right liver with vascular cancer thrombus and lymph node metastasis. Doctors thought the best time for the operation had been missed, but Liu and his family did not want to give up. After adjusting his shift with colleagues, he went to Beijing 301 Hospital on August 21 to have his right liver removed "quietly".

A week after the operation school began, in order not to delay the teachers and students, Liu wore a thick bandage to work. Unable to squeeze the bus and refusing to be pushed by his wife in a wheelchair, Liu went out half an hour earlier every day and walked slowly to the laboratory. The wound was so painful that he had to rest for two minutes against the trunk of a tree. Afraid of meeting acquaintances and taking the initiative to say hello, Liu, who is emulous and introverted, did not want his colleges and students to have any sympathy for him and did not mention his illness to anyone. He even casually said to Fengming Qi, who was closely associated with him, that he had a small waist surgery, and temporarily asked him to help maintain the equipment. Other colleagues felt that he did not look well and walked more slowly than usual. When asked, he only said that he was "not well and had a cough".

Every day when he was working, he had to go up and down the four steps about 1.2 meters high at least a dozen times and walk ten thousand steps in the 300 square meters laboratory. As long as he can insist on these things, Liu will never trouble others.

By the end of September 2018, the cancer had returned and he was on a long journey to fight it again. The side effects of taking targeted anti-cancer drugs caused abscesses in Liu's hands and feet, making it painful to walk in severe cases, but he still kept going to work on time. When he insisted another two months, cervical lymphatic invasion began, which was unbearable. In desperation, he went to First Affiliated Hospital of Xi 'an Jiaotong University to receive "immune + targeted drug" clinical treatment.

The doctor recommended a long rest and treatment every other week. Worried about work, Liu took the bus to and from the two places on weekends. Sometimes he went straight to the laboratory as soon as he got off the train in the morning. Sometimes when a student called him during an infusion, he would hold a bottle in one hand and answer questions about instrument operation on the other hand.

His wife, Hui Duan, watched his remote instruction every day. "He knowed the magnetic field so well that he was like standing next to an instrument. He didn't feel like a patient when he was interacting with a student. So I didn't have the heart to interrupt him"

He is like a "screw" riveted on NMR, always adhere to the post to assist teachers and students to do experiments and produce results in obscurity. 

“The instrument should be in normal operation and students’experiments should not be stopped.”

Unfortunately, in the summer vacation of 2019, due to repeated attacks of the disease, the doctor advised Liu to stop taking medicine and change the treatment regimen. The high cost about 600,000 to 700,000 yuan a year forced him to give up the treatment.

Nevertheless, Liu still stuck to his job. On the afternoon of August 19, 2019, his classmates of 1983 from Chemistry Department came to Lanzhou to meet. They saw Liu secretly hold down the liver several times and asked a few times, but he always said nothing

His classmate, Anping Wang, said: "During this period, he was always thinking about work and anxious to rush back to add liquid nitrogen to NMR."

In late September, Liu's condition deteriorated, but he endured work until the September 30 he was hospitalized. By this time, his illness was so severe that he could not sleep at night. Doctors had to prescribe morphine to relieve the pain. He had been working on morphine ever since. Because equipment always had some problems which could not be found out, Liu was a bit anxious. He went out early and came back late every day. So he was tired when he came back home and just wanted to lie down and have a rest.

The side effects of morphine showed up over time: nausea and vomiting, mood swings, severe constipation... Worried that he would disturb his wife's rest, Liu moved to his son's room and survived one sleepless night after another by listening to music in a low voice.

Seeing Liu swealing day by day, his wife felt distressed and advised him to give up work and go home to recover. But Liu worried about the equipment and always said, "Just wait." So his wife had to get his brother to call him to persuade him to quit his job and go back to hometown in Hunan province to recuperate. Gentle Liu got some angry and said "I won't quit my job easily". Furthermore, he added, “The instrument should be in normal operation and students’ experiments should not be stopped”.

Recalling those days, Hui Duan choked up: "I used to stand at the window and watch him move out of the yard. It's really strange that he can't sleep every night because of the pain, but in the next morning he would still get up on time and pack up and go to work like a normal person."

Another month passed in this way. In November 2019, Liu, whose weight had been controlled at 60 kilograms during the illness, began to lose weight sharply and vomit frequently, leaving his weight at 45 kilograms. But at this time, the equipment broke down again, Liu still insisted on going to work, using machine's idle time to find the reason.

On the evening of November 18, he came home tired but pleased to tell his wife that the equipment trouble had been found out and solved. That night when his friends came home to visit, he still smiled to comfort them and said he was still able to work.

At 3 a.m. on November 19, after several sleepless nights, he vomited blood. His family rushed him to the hospital emergency department to have emergency hemostasis treatment.

When he was transferred to the digestive ward at 9 a.m., he couldn't hold on any longer and told his family not to disturb him and he just wanted to sleep.

He had asked his wife to call Fengming Qi just three hours before he died. He said that he was ill and hospitalized, and asked for leave from Shao Xiangfeng, deputy director of SKLAOC. In Shao's impression, that was Liu's first time to ask for leave, which was also the last time.

Referring to this, Shao bursted into tears:" Whether there was anyone that suffering cancer, but kept quiet for his colleagues and insisted on his job like a "normal person? Whether there was anyone that straining the pain with morphine while trying to get to work? Whether there was anyone that hid his illness silently and never forgot to ask for leave from the organization until the end of his life?”

On Nov. 21, 2019, CCTV-1, “Remain true to our original aspiration and keep our mission firmly in mind” thematic education, broadcasted news that central management universities promoted the thematic education strictly and practically. The video captured Liu's daily work in the lab, instructing students to measure data and doing experiments, just two days before his death.

Liu looked energetic and full of energy in the picture. This is the last image he left, which perhaps is the one that he most wanted us to see.

As he wrote in his poem "Spring Grass": "Stooping not like a towering tree, and living not competing with flowers".

After Liu's death, his 90-year-old father took his son back to his hometown in Hunan province and chose a mountain site facing northwest as his burial site. There are green pine, bamboo, camphor and flowers in the mountain. Liu's father said Liu now could sleep well with his head in the northwest and his nostalgic home was at his feet.