When biologist Zhong Yang first arrived in the Tibetan Autonomous Region in 2001, his goal was to make an inventory of all living creatures on the “roof of the world.”

Since then he has collected more than 40 million seeds from nearly 1,000 species or varieties of plants, providing a great start for China’s national seed bank.

His latest discovery was Arabidopsis, a small flowering plant related to cabbage and mustard. Previously it wasn’t known to grow in Tibet. Studying the plant may shed light on how the environment changed after tectonic forces raised the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

“I believe a gene can bring hope to a country and a seed can benefit all mankind,” said Zhong, 50, dean of Fudan University’s Graduate School and Changjiang Professor of Biology at both Fudan and Tibet University.

China has been building its own gene pool of wild plants and animals since the China Germplasm Bank of Wild Species was established in Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province, in 2007. The seed bank will preserve seeds of plants that may have future uses in medicine and agriculture. Storing seeds will also protect biodiversity.

It is similar to Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank Project in England, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway and a project by the Vavilov Research Institute in Russia.

Zhong, who spends nearly half the year in Tibet, said collecting seeds in the autonomous region was a major challenge since the climate and environment vary greatly at different altitudes. More than 80 percent of the seeds Zhong has collected were from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau with a third of those growing at an altitude of at least 4,000 meters above sea level.

Zhong and his students have walked at least 10,000 kilometers annually in order to collect the seeds. He and members of his team have experienced altitude sickness and plant allergies, but they persisted. To save time, Zhong and his students often ate only one meal a day, taking yak meat and Tibetan buttered tea on their daily excursions.

“Scientific research itself is a challenge to humans,” said Zhong. “But challenges always coincide with opportunities.” The seed bank requires that at least 5,000 seeds of each plant be collected so they can be preserved for more than 100 years. Thanks to Zhong, pharmaceutical researchers extracted an anti-cancer agent from the seed of cedar trees that live at altitudes around 4,000 meters on the plateau.

Some seeds are easy to collect while others are more difficult. One difficult seed is from Amygdalus mira, a related species of peach with a smooth pit. The trees only grow in Tibet. In order to get 5,000 Amygdalus mira seeds, Zhong and his students started eating peaches, lots of peaches. They also asked some locals to help out.

“The seeds are in the pit so we had to eat the pits, which taste awful. But this is the safest way to get the seeds,” Zhong said.

Zhong also collected Chinese barberry shrub seeds as the plant has medicinal value and seeds from Meconopsis, which is known as the Himalayan blue poppy.

Despite spending countless hours collecting seeds, Zhong has remained devoted to his teaching career in Tibet.

In 2005, he joined the Institute of Biodiversity and Geobiology at Tibet University to conduct research. In 2009, he became a biology professor at Tibet University. Last year, he helped the university establish its first doctorate station in biology and won a national science funding award.

“After staying some years in Tibet, I have realized that Tibet needs an educator more than a biologist,” Zhong said.

“Tibetan students have an amazing natural laboratory on their doorstep, but I found they are just not that interested in science as far as I can tell. I want to inspire students and cultivate a scientific spirit among them as there are still places in Tibet that have not been explored.”

Zhong has instructed five Tibetan PhD students at Fudan University. Two have graduated while the others are still working on their degrees. He will soon have more students at Tibet University, which will recruit its inaugural PhD candidates in biology this year.

Tashi Tersing was Zhong’s first Tibetan PhD student at Fudan University. Tersing and Zhong spent three years investigating the distribution and living conditions of 30,000 cupressus gigantean, a unique plant that lives along the Yarlung Zangbo River in southeastern Tibet. Tersing now teaches at Tibet University.

In past years, many teachers and officials have been dispatched to work in Tibet to help improve education and medical services while also strengthening economic development.

Zhong said he will keep working in Tibet as he feels his research has only reached the “tip of the iceberg.”

The bioligist also said he plans to organize a national team of experts to conduct more research in Tibet that will benefit the world.

Zhong was born to a teachers’ family in Hunan Province. In 1979, the then 15-year-old was admitted to a class for gifted young people at the University of Science and Technology of China in Anhui Province.

The class was proposed by Tsung-Dao Lee, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, in 1978 to allow gifted young Chinese to receive a college education and cultivate them into elite scientists. It was established under the background that China faced a shortage of scientific talents for development.

Students enrolled in the elite youth class are generally considered “geniuses.” Many of Zhong’s former schoolmates are now famous executives, professors and scientists including Microsoft Vice President Zhang Yaqin and Henry Cao, professor at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business.

“I don’t think I am a genius,” Zhong said. “The class is a place that makes you understand you are not smart enough.”

Zhong said it was a difficult period in his life but it equipped him with solid scientific knowledge that helped shape who he is today. Zhong studied physics and then radio electronics at the university.

In 1984, Zhong graduated and was assigned to work at the Wuhan Institute of Botany under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The job was unrelated to his major, but Zhong said it didn’t matter.

“It allowed me to learn more and all I have ever wanted is to be a scientist. That’s my dream,” Zhong said.

He added that students today spend too little time studying and too much time complaining about things such as not finding a job that matches their major. Zhong became a professor at Fudan University’s School of Life Sciences in 2000.

He was appointed dean of the university’s Graduate School in 2012. Although he has a lot of administrative work now, Zhong has never given up research.

“I have never regretted being a scientist, although I did somewhat regret moving to Shanghai, where house prices are too high,” Zhong said, partly joking.

“Imagine if what you do today benefits many people, even after you die,” he said. “Everything difficult is worth the price.”