Struck down in mid-life

Serious diseases affecting Chinese earlier in life, Yang Wanli reports in Beijing.

While most Chinese honor their ancestors on Tomb Sweeping Day, Tao Ye spent a lot of this year's holiday remembering a classmate from primary school who died of cancer a decade ago.

"She was the second person in our class to die of cancer. Another had passed away from the same cause a year earlier. She was also 43," Tao said. Given that her grandparents both lived into their 90s, Tao was shocked that her friends died at such a relatively young age.