Anhui science island building innovative strength

Talent blooms in unexpected places, according to an old saying. The same can be said of science, on a green island northwest of Hefei, the capital of Anhui province.

Rather than livestock grazing peacefully on the grassy land, the area features cutting-edge research institutes - and researchers such as Liu Qingsong.

Like many of his peers, Liu was an early believer in the Western dream. He headed to the United States - to Harvard Medical School - for his postdoctoral studies and later became a researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. But after spending a decade in the US, he decided to return to China in 2012.