Most people don't look forward to spending a night in hospital, but not Hang Bin. She was beaming on Friday, hours after her bone marrow was extracted at a Beijing hospital and rushed across the Taiwan Straits to help save the life of a teenage girl.

Hang, 36, from Suzhou, eastern Jiangsu Province, and Xiao Yan, who is in her 20s and from central Hunan Province, on Friday became the first two mainlanders to have their bone marrow extracted after it was matched with patients from Taiwan.

"I am happy to give my blood cells and hope the recipient will recover soon," Xiao said at Daopei Hospital, where the extractions, organized by the Chinese Marrow Donor Program (CMDP), were conducted on Friday.

Both women were doing well and would remain under observation for another couple of days, said Lu Daopei, the hospital's head doctor.

The two bone marrow transplants were scheduled to take place late last night at two Taiwan hospitals after a nearly 10-hour flight from Beijing to Hong Kong, and then to the island, noted Yang Guoliang, deputy director of the Buddhist Tzu-Chi Stem Cell Center, CMDP's counterpart in Taiwan.

(China Daily 07/21/2007 page3)