Remembering James Yang

On March 6, 2019, our dear and respected colleague James Yang passed away in Beijing, China. It was a sad moment for everyone, including his beloved family and close friends at Cook China.

James was the first and the longest-tenured employee at Cook China, and he was the one who built Cook’s presence in China from virtually nothing.

While we know that a person’s life story can never be told in full, we hope that with the words and memories of people who worked with him for many years, we may be able to piece together one account of his life, with the light of his humility, knowledge, and dedication shining through.

You can click here to read this tribute in Chinese.

Below is a video narration commemorating James Yang’s life and his time at Cook. In it, there are some photos of James that we have collected from different colleagues. We hope they can help you walk down memory lane and provide some comfort that James must be resting in a peaceful and happy place.

About James Yang

James was born on February 25, 1960, in Leibo County, Sichuan Province. He joined the People’s Liberation Army of China in 1978 and studied at the First Military Medical University in China from 1979 to 1984. He became a cardiothoracic surgeon at Beijing Railway General Hospital (currently known as Beijing Shijitan Hospital) after his graduation.

Career at Cook

During his time as a surgeon, James got to know a lot about Cook’s products. After making a midlife career switch, he joined Cook in 1994 as the first and only employee for Cook in mainland China at that time. He took on multiple roles when his services were required.

“The milestones he’d made in his career paved the way for the development of Cook’s business in China,” said Jianguo Dai, director of the MedSurg division at Cook China.

Operating from a small rented representative office in Beijing, he took charge of getting Cook’s products registered in China, and he strove to “spread Cook’s advanced interventional technologies, as well as advocate the products among physicians in academic meetings and trade fairs when interventional therapy was quite unknown in China at that time,” said Frank Wei, regional business manager, Vascular division, Cook China.

“By conscientiously communicating between the global regulatory bodies and the domestic authorities when China launched a series of supervision regulations at the turn of the century, James also helped Cook China smoothly transition into a new era for the medical device industry,” continued Frank, who was one of the earliest employees hired by James for Cook China in 2005.

“It was just James in a tiny office, trying to register all of our products for China for all the different businesses,” said John Kamstra, vice president, executive, and chief financial officer, of Cook Group and Cook Medical.

Great work ethic

Always the quiet guy in the corner that gets work done, James believed that by simply doing our best as individuals at work, we could help make the whole company function better.

Miro Yang, an executive of Honest Medical, Cook’s earliest partnered distributor in China, and James’s old friend at work remembered that, in the early days when the delivery service was limited in China, there was a camp bed in James’s office beside his desk, next to piles of registry documents and Cook products.

Feeling confused when he first saw it, Miro asked and learned that in order to get the sample products tested in the third-party agencies as early as possible and to save expenses, James often chose to sleep in the office, catch the early train, and carry the products to the agencies all by himself.

A cultural ambassador

Before Cook had more opportunities to learn about China, James was the sole voice that communicated regularly between people in China and the global Cook team. Aside from business meetings, James often played host to help visitors from various Cook global offices learn about Chinese culture and understand people’s lives in China.

“I became the representative director for the Cook Asia Beijing Rep Office and made the move from Singapore to Beijing in January 2007,” said Michael Lim, business director, Vascular division, Greater China and Korea.

“James helped me get oriented into Beijing and made me feel comfortable by educating me on the culture, social norms, and history of Beijing. We spent many lunches together where he explained to me the unique geographic orientation of Beijing City by introducing me to all of the various historical city gates and their significance. I quickly settled in and we were working alongside one another,” he continued.

Daniel J. (DJ) Sirota, vice president, MedSurg division Cook Medical, shared a similar memory. He regarded James as a cultural ambassador for Cook and felt especially appreciative that James taught him about the importance of different cultures and relationship development in business when he was still very new to understanding China.

Lasting impact

James is a great source of inspiration for us all.

Weidong Luo, area business manager, Vascular division, Cook China, remarked that James helped Cook “achieve a strong foothold in this country before Cook China was here.”

His contributions as “a strong foothold” not only consisted of the physical presence of our products, technologies, and businesses that he helped with, but it also consisted of an intangible presence that reflects the treasured qualities of a person. With humility, dedication, and friendliness, James cemented and laid the cornerstone of Cook’s culture in China.

During Cook China’s early years, James helped interview many of our first employees and orient them to Cook. Since then, some of these early employees have grown into team leaders or managers and would specially introduce James to their own new employees in the hopes of exposing them as early as possible to the Cook culture James embodied.

“For me, James is living and breathing by the culture of Cook,” said Sunny Zhai, regional manager, MedSurg division, Cook China. “So, whenever there was a new employee on my team, I would introduce them to James, because of his amiable personality, humbleness, professionalism, and perseverance that are the exact qualities we honor the most in Cook culture.”

Personal interests

James enjoyed playing ping-pong a lot, and would deliver strong and quick shots at any opponent. He continued playing this game until the very last days of his life. He also enjoyed taking long road trips with his wife, to travel as well as to visit his elderly parents and family members in his hometown.

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Written by Joy Zhang, a Corporate Communications specialist in Corporate Marketing and Communications at Cook China.

You can click, The journey of a graft, to read and learn more about how a customized graft makes the journey from concept to a full graft plan ready to be signed off and ordered by the doctor. You can also click, Episode 3 of The Cook Podcast to read, listen, and learn more about the relaunch of The Cook Podcast.