When a Chinese state television microphone recently caught China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia musing about the possibility of living to 150 and perhaps even forever, many reacted with anxious consternation.

当中国国家电视台的麦克风最近捕捉到中国最高领导人习近平与俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京私下畅谈活到150岁甚至永生的可能性时，许多人忧心忡忡地表达了自己的惊愕。

But there has been no tut-tutting in the laboratory of Lonvi Biosciences, a longevity medicine start-up in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. “Living to 150 is definitely realistic,” said Lyu Qinghua, the chief technology officer of the company, which has developed anti-aging pills based on a compound found in grapeseed extract. “In a few years, this will be the reality.”

但在位于中国南方城市深圳的长寿药物初创企业Lonvi Biosciences的实验室里，却没有人对此大惊小怪。“活到150岁绝对是现实的，”该公司的首席技术官吕清华（音）说。该公司开发了一种基于葡萄籽提取物中化合物的抗衰药丸。“几年后，这将成为现实。”

He is skeptical about modern medicine defeating death entirely — something Mr. Putin said was possible with organ transplants — but he thinks that longevity science is advancing so fast even the seemingly impossible might come to pass.

他对现代医学能否完全战胜死亡持怀疑态度——普京说通过器官移植有可能做到这一点——但他认为，长寿科学发展得如此之快，即使看似不可能的事情也可能成为现实。

“In five to 10 years, nobody will get cancer,” he predicted.

他预言：“在五到十年内，不再会有人得癌症。”

The search for the elixir of life, embraced with gusto in recent years by American tech billionaires like Peter Thiel, has been underway in China for more than two millenniums. It started with the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who ordered a nationwide hunt for death-defying potions. Just in case that did not work, he also ordered the creation of thousands of terra-cotta warriors to protect him in his grave should he die.

近年来，对长生不老药的探索受到了彼得·蒂尔等美国科技亿万富翁的热烈追捧，而这一追寻在中国已有两千余年历史。它始于第一位皇帝秦始皇，他下令在全国范围内寻找不死药。为防万一，他还下令建造了数千具兵马俑，以便在他死后在坟墓里保护他。

The emperor died at 49, possibly from mercury poisoning caused by an anti-aging treatment.

这位皇帝死于49岁，死因可能是服用抗衰老药物导致的汞中毒。

长寿药初创企业Lonvi Biosciences的首席技术官吕清华（左）与首席执行官叶旨涛于10月在深圳。吕清华在Lonvi的生物化学实验室工作。该公司生产的原花青素C1胶囊盒装产品，据称含有能清除人体内所谓“僵尸细胞”的化合物。

A whiff of quackery has hung over the longevity business from the start. But investment from the state and private companies, as well as surging interest among both Chinese leaders and the public, have turned it into a legitimate and sometimes lucrative branch of medicine.

从一开始，长寿业就笼罩着一股江湖术士的气息。但是，来自国家和私营企业的投资以及中国领导人和公众日益高涨的兴趣已经把它变成了一个合法的、有时还利润丰厚的医学分支。

China, eager to catch up with and, whenever possible, surpass the West in biotech, artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies, has made the longevity industry a national priority, pouring billions into research and related commercial spinoffs.

中国渴望在生物技术、人工智能等先进技术方面赶上并尽可能超越西方，因此将长寿产业列为国家重点，投入数十亿资金用于相关研究及商业化应用。

“They have improved very rapidly. A few years ago, there was nothing here and the West was still far ahead,” said Vadim Gladyshev, a Harvard Medical School professor who has done pioneering work on longevity, including an experiment that extended the expected life span of old mice by connecting their circulatory systems to young mice.

“他们进步得非常迅速。几年前，这里什么都没有，西方仍然遥遥领先，”哈佛医学院教授瓦迪姆·格拉迪舍夫说。他在长寿方面进行过开创性的工作，包括一项将年老小鼠的循环系统与年轻小鼠连接起来，延长年老小鼠预期寿命的实验。

Chinese researchers, he said during a recent trip to China to attend two scientific conferences, “are rapidly catching up.”

他在最近一次前往中国参加两个科学会议时说，中国的研究人员“正在迅速赶上”。

China’s average life expectancy last year reached 79 years, five years higher than the global average, according to The People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece.

据中共机关报《人民日报》报道，去年中国人均预期寿命达到79岁，比全球平均水平高出五岁。

But that, achieved through steady improvements in health care and lifestyle, is still behind Japan’s average of nearly 85 years and a long way from the 150 years mentioned by Mr. Xi.

但这一通过医疗保健和生活方式的持续改善所取得的成就仍落后于日本近85岁的平均寿命，更远未达到习近平提到的150岁。

Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin, both 72, may have just been making small talk. But they were taken seriously by exiled opponents of the Communist Party, who pointed to a 2019 video that appeared on Chinese social media purporting to be a promotional pitch by an elite military hospital in Beijing, 301, which treats senior officials.

72岁的习近平与普京或许只是闲谈。但流亡海外的中共反对派对此极为重视，他们特别提到2019年在中国社交媒体流传的一段视频——它是北京负责治疗高级官员的精英军医院301医院的宣传片。

The video, which was quickly scrubbed by Chinese censors, boasted that the hospital was doing pioneering work for the “981 Leaders’ Health Project” — and aimed to extend the life span of senior party figures to 150 years.

这段视频很快就被中国审查机构删掉了。它吹嘘说，该医院正在为“981首长健康工程”进行开创性的工作，目标是将党内高级官员的寿命延长到150岁。

“The average life span of Chinese leaders is far longer than the life span of leaders in developed nations,” the video said, pointing to decades of work by the hospital to keep alive leaders like Mao Zedong, who died at 82 in 1976, and Deng Xiaoping, who was 92 when he died in 1997.

视频宣称：“中国领导人的平均寿命远远高于同期西方发达国家领导人的平均寿命，”并列举该院数十年来延续毛泽东（1976年逝世，享年82岁）和邓小平（1997年逝世，享年92岁）等领导人寿命的案例。

Sensitive to all discussion of leaders’ health, Chinese state television, which inadvertently captured the conversation between the leaders before a military parade in Beijing in September, ordered Western news services to delete the footage.

对所有有关领导人健康议题极为敏感的中国国家电视台无意中捕捉到领导人在9月份北京阅兵式前的对话，随即要求西方新闻机构删除这段视频。

The hot-mic musings aside, China’s enthusiasm for extending life-span has grown in tandem with its rapid economic growth, which has given hundreds of millions of people the time and money needed to look beyond surviving day-to-day.

抛开这段被麦克风录下的热议闲谈，中国对延长寿命的热情随着经济的快速增长而增长，经济繁荣使数亿人拥有了超越日常生存所需的时间与财富。

One Chinese company riding the tide has been Time Pie, a Shanghai-based group that got its start marketing dietary supplements and now organizes scientific conferences and publishes a magazine, Aging Slow, Living Well.

乘势而起的上海企业时光派便是例证，这家总部位于上海的公司以销售膳食补充剂起家，现在组织科学会议，出版杂志《慢衰老，益生活》。

9月在上海举办的长寿与抗衰老会议上，一个推销“永生岛”的展位。会议期间展出的补充剂和治疗方案。参与者推广了各种抗衰老产品。

“Nobody in China was talking about longevity before, only rich Americans,” said Gan Yu, the company’s co-founder. “Now many Chinese are interested and have the money they need to extend their lives.”

“以前在中国没有人谈论长寿，只有富有的美国人（才谈论这件事），”该公司联合创始人甘宇（音）说。“现在很多中国人对此感兴趣，也有延长寿命的经济实力。”

Surging interest was on display at a recent international gathering organized by Time Pie in Shanghai of Chinese and foreign scientists presenting their research, as well as businesses hawking anti-aging creams and potions, goji berries, cryogenic and hyperbaric chambers and other devices that are supposed to slow aging.

最近，时光派在上海组织了一次国际会议，会上中外科学家展示了研究成果，商家也在兜售抗衰老面霜和药水、枸杞、低温舱和高压舱以及其他据称可以延缓衰老的设备，人们对此表现出了浓厚的兴趣。

Rlab, a Shanghai-based company that claims “technology can prevent humans from aging,” invited prospective customers to enter what looked like a telephone booth — a cryogenic device in which the temperature drops to minus 200 Fahrenheit. Ivor Yu, an entrepreneur from northeast China in the longevity business, stepped in, only to jump out after a few seconds, shivering from the cold. He also inspected the company’s “anti-aging magic box.” He left without buying.

总部位于上海的瑞健未来公司声称“科技可以阻止衰老”，他们邀请潜在客户进入一个看起来像电话亭的设备——一个温度降至零下128摄氏度的低温设备。来自中国东北、从事长寿生意的企业家伊沃·余（音）走了进去，几秒钟后就跳出来，冻得瑟瑟发抖。他还参观了该公司的“抗衰老魔法盒”。他没买东西就走了。

SuperiorMed, a health care company that runs what it says is the world’s biggest “longevity hospital” in the Chinese city of Chengdu, promoted “immortality islands,” though it acknowledged they do not exist yet. The company’s founder, Li Dale, was vague about whether “immortality islands” would be anything more than luxury health spas offering blood tests and other forms of preventive medicine in exotic locales.

医疗保健公司循上在中国成都经营着据称是世界上最大的“长寿医院”，该公司宣传“永生岛”概念，但承认它们还不存在。该公司的创始人戴尔·李（音）对“永生岛”的具体形态含糊其辞，仅表示它可能是在一个充满异域风情地方提供血液检测等预防性医疗服务的豪华健康水疗中心。

But the conference also attracted serious scientists like Harvard’s Prof. Gladyshev and Steve Horvath, a German American aging researcher who is a legend in the field for his work developing the first “aging clock,” a measure of aging biomarkers.

但这次会议也吸引了一些严肃的科学家，比如哈佛大学的格拉迪舍夫和德裔美国抗衰研究人员史蒂夫·霍瓦特。霍瓦特是该领域的传奇人物，发明了第一个“衰老时钟”，用来衡量衰老的生物标志物。

Longevity science, Mr. Horvath said, used to be dominated by “wild claims” that alienated many legitimate scientists, but has seen a “vast improvement” in recent years, including in China. “Nobody serious talks about immortality at scientific conferences anymore because it is so absurd,” he added.

霍瓦特说，长寿科学曾充斥着令众多正规科学家反感的“荒诞主张”，但近年来已经看到了“巨大的进步”，包括在中国。“再也没有人在科学会议上认真谈论永生了，因为这太荒谬了，”他还说。

But the idea of living forever lingers as a marketing tool. Immortal Dragons, a Singapore investment fund focused on longevity projects, is run by a young entrepreneur from China, Bo Yang Wang, who has explored moneymaking opportunities in cryopreservation, 3-D printing of organs and “whole-body replacement.”

然而永生概念仍作为营销工具存在。专注于长寿项目的新加坡投资基金不朽真龙由来自中国的年轻企业家王伯洋（音）经营，曾探索低温保存、器官3D打印及“全身替换”等商机。

Lonvi, the longevity start-up in Shenzhen, has more modest goals.

深圳的长寿创业公司Lonvi Biosciences的目标更为务实。

It opened a lab in 2022 in a business tower on the edge of the sprawling Chinese city next to Hong Kong after scientists in Shanghai discovered that a natural compound found in grapeseed extract — procyanidin C1 or PCC1 — increased the life span of mice by selectively killing senescent, or aged, cells and protecting healthy cells. (Lonvi is not connected to the Shanghai scientists.)

在上海的科学家发现，葡萄籽提取物中的一种天然化合物——原花青素C1(PCC1)——通过选择性地杀死衰老细胞和保护健康细胞来延长小鼠的寿命后，Lonvi于2022年在这座毗邻香港的中国城市边缘的一座商业大楼里开设了一个实验室。（Lonvi与上海的科学家团队没有关系。）

Mice treated with the compound lived 9.4 percent longer across their lifetime — and 64.2 percent longer from the start of treatment.

用这种化合物治疗的小鼠的生命周期延长了9.4%，自治疗开始起寿命延长幅度高达64.2%。

The findings, published in an article in Nature Metabolism in 2021, were groundbreaking. But in September, the journal issued an editor’s note alerting readers to “errors in the data,” though it did not retract the article. Subsequent studies, including one in Japan, have supported the initial claims.

这些具有开创性的发现于2021年发表在《自然-代谢》(Nature Metabolism)期刊。但在9月，该期刊发布了一份编者按，提醒读者注意“数据中的错误”，尽管它没有撤回这篇文章。随后的研究，包括日本的一项研究，都支持了最初的结论。

Translating what works for mice to human beings requires long and rigorous testing, and what works for mice often disappoints with people, said David Barzilai, an American medical doctor and founder of Barzilai Longevity Consulting. The “canonical example” of this, he said, is rapamycin, a compound that has been proven to “robustly” extend the life span of mice and other animals but has “uncertain” effect on healthy human adults.

巴兹拉伊长寿咨询公司的创始人、美国医生戴维·巴兹拉伊说，把对小鼠有效的方法应用到人类身上需要长期而严格的试验，并且人体应用往往效果不佳。他说，这方面的“典型例子”是雷帕霉素，这种化合物已被证明能够“有力地”延长小鼠和其他动物的寿命，但对健康成年人的影响“不确定”。

China, he said, “is increasingly taking longevity and aging biology seriously at both the institutional and policy level.” But, he added, “strong scientific intent does not guarantee uniformly high rigor or translational success. The challenge is not just doing more, but doing better.”

他说，中国“在制度和政策层面越来越重视长寿和衰老生物学”。但是，他补充说，“强烈的科研意愿并不能保证研究始终保持高水准或成功转化。挑战不仅在于做更多，更在于做得更好。”

9月，上海一场长寿与抗衰老会议上，与会者正在体验低温疗法舱。试用瑞健公司的超轻碳纤维高压氧面罩。瑞健的红光疗法舱室。

Grapeseed has long been popular as a health food in the West and in traditional Chinese medicine. But Lonvi claims to have isolated molecules within it that “kill zombie cells” — aging cells that do not die and hurt healthy cells — and to have found a way to produce capsules containing high concentrations of these.

葡萄籽作为一种保健食品，在西方和中医中一直很受欢迎。但Lonvi公司声称，他们已经在其中分离出了能够“杀死僵尸细胞”（不死亡且损害健康细胞的衰老细胞）的分子，并找到了一种方法来生产含有这些分子的高浓度胶囊。

“This is not just one more pill. This is the holy grail,” said Yip Tszho, who goes by the name Zico, Lonvi’s chief executive.

“这不仅仅是又一颗药丸。这是圣杯，”该公司首席执行官叶旨涛说。

The company thinks its pills, combined with a healthy lifestyle and good medical care, can help people live past 100 and up to 120.

Lonvi称，它的药片加上健康的生活方式和良好的医疗保健，可以帮助人们活到100岁甚至120岁。

David Furman, an associate professor at the Buck Institute, a biomedical research center at Stanford University devoted to research on aging, said the Chinese pills “seem promising” but need to be tested in large clinical trials.

斯坦福大学致力于衰老研究的生物医学研究中心巴克研究所的副教授戴维·弗曼说，中国的药“看起来很有希望”，但需要进行大规模的临床试验。

The Buck Institute, he said, is going to start trials to “demonstrate efficacy and validate” the company’s “previous findings and claims.”

他说，巴克研究所将开始试验，以“证明有效性并验证”该公司的“先前的发现和主张”。

Mr. Yip still sees a big market, not only for people with money but also their pets.

叶旨涛仍然看好这个巨大的市场，不仅是有钱人，还有他们的宠物。

Referring to China’s first emperor, he said: “Rich people are like Qin Shi Huang and they are looking for immortality — or at least longer lives.”

他援引中国首位皇帝的典故表示：“富人就像秦始皇，他们寻求永生——或者至少是长寿。”