Ye Chuan Fa was right at his own cubicle, also wearing a thick coat. As the Amys introduced him, he stood up and stuck out his hand. He didn’t speak any English, but smiled and offered a chair and his business card, which had his information in Chinese characters on one side and in English on the other. He didn’t seem suspicious, nor ask any personal questions.

“This is our head office,” he said. “We have 30 branch companies in China.”

He spoke for a few minutes about his business, but the Amys’ translation skills quickly petered out without revealing how many chemicals Ye’s company manufactures itself. Salespeople said they had two factories, one in Shenzhen and one in Wuhan. “Our factory [in Shenzhen] is the only NPP plant in China,” Chen Li told me over Skype in December 2017, before noting that production had been discontinued. He said the Shenzhen factory had also been producing 4-ANPP, and that it was not open to outsiders.

“Most of the steroids we make at our own factory,” said one of the Amys. “Not all—most of.” It too was off-limits. “We cannot go into the laboratory. Our boss say, for safety.”

“For security,” added the other Amy.



In February 2019, I called Ye Chuan Fa and revealed my identity as a journalist, speaking to him through an interpreter. He didn’t deny selling fentanyl precursors: “Anything that the country schedules, we don’t sell. As long as it’s scheduled, we won’t sell it. If it’s not scheduled, we can sell it.”

He did claim, however, to be uninformed about these chemicals’ use. “We don’t know much about these things,” he said. “We make raw materials. Not finished products. We are factory to factory.” I disputed this assertion—that his enterprise sold only to other companies—noting that numerous Yuancheng salespeople had tried to sell me precursors as an individual.

I inquired about the other, still-unscheduled fentanyl precursors Yuancheng salespeople were still trying to sell me, but he denied knowledge of these chemicals. When I asked him why Yuancheng mailed some of its chemicals in disguised packaging, with the promise to evade customs, he went uncharacteristically silent.

Read: Naloxone has made overdosing less terrifying

After I said goodbye to Ye at the office in January, my tour with the Amys continued downstairs. There, they offered a surprising revelation: The workers live on the premises, in dormitory-style rooms housing four to seven people, on average. In fact, the Amys were roommates. They presented the personnel department, and then, on the bottom levels, a pair of canteens where employees take meals. Inside the kitchen, the Yuancheng company chef chopped up meats and vegetables for that night’s dinner with a large cleaver.

Dorm environments like these are not uncommon at Chinese companies, and the free room and board is part of Yuancheng’s sales pitch. Its ads promise that successful employees will be able to “buy a car within 10 years and a house within 20”—considered particularly desirable traits among singles—and many ads mention a variety of perks, including free cellphones, a pension, the possibility of domestic and foreign travel, “occasional dinner parties,” and “six types of insurance.”