In the poem that Tu’s father took her name from, the bleating deer is chewing on a single plant. Of all the tens of thousands of different species that plant could have been, it just so happens that the one the deer is seen to be eating is the exact same plant that Tu would go on to discover to be the cure for malaria: the qinghao. ‘How this links my whole life with qinghao,’ said Tu, ‘will probably remain an interesting coincidence forever.’‡
