Living with Hepatitis B: The Weight of Stigma

In China, investigative journalism sometimes manages to expose truths the government would prefer to keep hidden. It was 2003 when Han Dong, a young aspiring journalist who had landed an internship at a prestigious newspaper, seemed poised for the breakthrough that could transform his career. He had uncovered evidence of a vast scheme: the forging of medical certificates so that people with hepatitis B could conceal their diagnosis. Schools, universities, employers all demanded these documents. For the afflicted, there was no legal protection—only closed doors. A falsified certificate was the only way out. Han Dong faced a choice. He abandoned his story. Instead of pursuing the scoop, he decided to investigate the illegal discrimination system he'd discovered. He gave voice to countless people whose only crime was contracting—often unknowingly—a disease that, while it might not kill them, made ordinary life nearly impossible. Some he knew personally: his closest friend, brilliant in his studies but unable to continue at university or find work; a young girl he tutored, at risk of never returning to school. They were the visible faces of a vast crowd where the "sick" and the "healthy" looked identical to strangers, yet the sick bore their condition as an unjust sentence without hope. Director Wang Jing titled the film The Best Is Yet to Come internationally, but the original Chinese title means something closer to relentless, without rest—capturing both the journalist's tireless struggle to help those in need and a larger truth: the fight against discrimination must continue without pause or respite. Though the law now forbids it, such discrimination persists in secret, underground, woven into the fabric of daily life.