Press Reports

FABAO is not only interesting as a highly effective product: there is also a fascinating history behind it. It is the story of Dr. Zhao Zhangguang, a simple country doctor who carried out his research with great persistence 20 years ago, and who has now become one of China's most respected and wealthiest personalities.

As many as 15 years ago, the world's leading newspapers and magazines in America, Asia and Australia were reporting Dr. Zhangguang's spectacular successes – examples include the 'New York Times', 'Newsweek', the 'Financial Revue' and many more. Here are some samples:

Herald Sun, Australia (18.4.97)

New York Times (26.1.1988)

'...In the beginning Dr. Zhao said he began mixing herbs and oils that were traditionally believe to stimulate hair growth, things like the dried rhizome of Rehmannia or tubers of multiflower knot weed. 'Those just don’t work', Dr. Zhao said. 'Everyone thinks they do, but they don’t. In the beginning I was using a bit here, decreasing there. There wasn’t any effect at all.'

After about 40 failures, Dr. Zhao said, he was ready to throw up his hands. 'People said, I was mad', he said. 'People scorned me.They didn’t think I would be successful. That did it, he said.

I kept on working.'

As he worked, his money ran out and he had to rent out one of the three rooms of his house to another villager. 'I still didn’t have enough money', he said. 'My wife said that she would support me and she started raising pigs and chickens.'

Altogether, Dr. Zhao said he whipped up 101 different mixtures before he hit on the right concotion. 'I had a patient who was bald, but he came to me because he had a fever and skin rash', Dr. Zhao explained. 'I gave him a new medicine I had been working on. One day he came over and started yelling at me that I hadn’t cured the fever, but that he was growing hair.'

Word spread. First villagers from around his home county came by, then people beyond the county. 'In the first group of 50 patients there was some effectiveness', the doctor said. I made some changes and the effectiveness improved.' What did the trick, Dr. Zhao said, was the careful blending of ginseng, the root of membranous milk vetch, Chinese Angelica, a type of Aconitum, dried ginger, walnut meat, safflower, the root of red-rooted Salvia, a Psoralea and alcohol.

Word spread some more. In 1976 a reporter from Hangzhou came by to look into rumors that there were no bald men in Dr. Zhao’s county anymore. The reporter, Pan Guozheng, happened to be bald. 'He came to see me', Dr. Zhao said. 'Of course he didn’t believe anything. But I gave him some of my medicine and after about 3 months he began to grow hair. Then he wrote up a report. That was the first.'

The newspaper invited Dr. Zhao to Hangzhou to try his remedy in the big city. Over several years, he said, he treated more than 1000 patients there with a success rate of more than 90 percent. In Beijing, a group of city officials heard of advancing hairlines down south and sent a delegation to see what the excitement was about. By this time, Dr. Zhao said, he had compiled a hefty caseload of satisfied patients and had his liniment certified by the provincial authorities as effective.

Officials from Beijing’s Bureau of Civil Affairs wooed the good doctor with promises of housing, a factory of his own and fame. So in 1986 Dr. Zhao moved to the capital and began to set up a plant to produce '101 Hair Regeneration Liniment'. Word spilled out of China. Dr. Zhao found himself traveling to Hong Kong and Japan bearing hope for the depilated. Then, last October, he was awarded the top prize of the 38th Brussels Eureka World Fair, a gathering of inventors from around the globe. Dr. Zhao was made a Chevalier and awarded a lustrous white cross dangling from a red ribbon.

Today, Dr. Zhao works out of a third-floor office in a grubby masonry building in the industrial quarter south of Beijing. Surrounded by stacks of before-and-after color photographs, a staff of hair specialists treats patients, and for difficult cases, Dr. Zhao himself offers an expert view...'

Newsweek (28.3.1988)

'...Amid the flurry of sophisticated and sophistic approaches to hair growth comes on an old fashioned Chinese herbal liniment that many Asians believe is a miracle cure for baldness. According to individual claims, the lotion can grow practically a whole new head of hair in six months (imagine the fun Western advertising copywriters could have with that benefit!). Thousands of Asian men reportedly have used the product and 90 percent are said to have found it effective - so mush so, in fact, that many call it a 'magic liquid' for hair...'

'...Though Tokyo has not authorized the importation of 101, Japanese men are buying it from a Hong Kong dealer for $93 a bottle. Supply is scarce, however, a spokesman for a company that acts as a liaison with the Hong Kong dealer says: 'We receive more than 200 phone calls a day. Some of the callers are desperate and begin sobbing on the phone'. Japanes novelist Shusaku Endo is trying 101 and reporting the results in a weekly magazine. Masashi Sada, a popular Japanese singer, said recently on the radio that the product worked wonders on his head...'