Yu Dejun (first from the left) takes a group photo with his guide and the Dulong people during an expedition to the Dulong River (photo taken from Hu Zonggang: A Brief History of Plant Research in Yunnan). The third left is suspected to be Kong Zhiqing.
China is one of the countries with the richest biological species in the world, and the number of plant species in Yunnan ranks first among the provinces. Its terrain is broken, the environment is complex, the climate is diverse, a mountain has four seasons, ten miles of different days, providing a unique ecological environment for the survival and reproduction of plants.
The treasures of the Yunnan plant kingdom have attracted a large number of Western collectors to collect plant specimens. Modern French missionary J. Travey M. Delavey (1834-1895) collected 200,000 specimens over a twelve-year period; the British botanist George Forrest (1873-1932) took more than 30,000 plants on seven expeditions to Yunnan, more than 6,000 species; the legendary explorer, botanist, geographer, and linguist Joseph Francis Rock (1884-1962) in Yunnan" Harvest "more than sixty thousand plants, more than three thousand species." After the fall of the Republic of China, Chinese botanists also took action and organized work in Yunnan. In particular, the North Jingsheng Biological Survey Institute (hereinafter referred to as the Jingsheng Biological Survey) has the longest collection time and the largest harvest. In the seven years from 1932, Director Hu Xianhua successively dispatched three "Yunnan Biological Investigation Missions" led by Cai Xitao (1932-1934), Wang Qiwu (1934-1936, 1939-1942), and Yu Dejun (1937-1938).
From Yunnan to Beijing, the whole journey is nearly 3,000 kilometers, when the communication between the two places is mainly letters, and most of the existing information about plant collection is preserved in archives or professional academic institutions, and there is no chance to know Jingjing, but occasionally you can see sporadic "fish that slipped through the net" in the auction. The letter in hand was purchased from Confucius Used Book Network, which was jokingly called "the most profitable garbage collection app on the Chinese Internet" Confucius Old Book Network. The letter shows the situation when Yu Dejun first arrived in Kunming during the third large-scale collection in Yunnan. The full text is as follows:
Mr. Wei Yi's Great Insight:
Therefore, it has been two months since the words of the capital, and the guidance of the Lotus Guan chui is grateful. The southbound journey passed through Shanghai, Hong Kong and Haiphong, and took the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway into Yunnan, and arrived in Kunming in more than 20 days on the way. When passing through coastal defense, the French customs and customs inspections were tight, but fortunately, the French ambassador's introduction letter was allowed to be released tax-free, which was also the gift of Mr. France's repeated help. There are still a few days left here, the purchase of travel equipment and negotiations on remittances and security issues, but continue to go north, this to Dali thirteen stations, Dali to Lijiang seven or eight stations, Lijiang and then grouped to Muli Zhongdian Adun, each ranging from ninety stations. Border areas are inconvenient, time-consuming and expensive, and there are so many.
The former instruction to buy cinnamon (binary) jade guizi (binary) Pu'er tea (one yuan) in Dian has been bought, that is, wang qi no brother with ping, (wang jun can leave in the middle of the month) Xi cha received. Tell the insects to do their best, and to pay attention to the lotus, and not to read it. What's the latest situation? Hope often gives notice. Comfort!
Hurry to wish Yan Qi
After learning Yu Dejun prayed again on March 6
Yu Dejun sent a letter to Yang Weiyi.
Yu Dejun (1908-1986) was a horticulturist and plant taxonomist. From 1928 to 1931, he studied in the Biology Department of National Peking Normal University, and was deeply appreciated by his teacher Hu Xianhua because of his excellent grades and hard work, and he served as an assistant teacher before graduation, and then entered the Plant Department of the Jingsheng Institute.
On January 19, 1937, the Jingsheng Biological Survey institute was commissioned by the Royal Horticultural Society to collect seeds of alpine plants in Yunnan. The leader of the team, Yu Dejun and his party, went south from Beiping to Shanghai, then took a boat from Hong Kong to Haiphong, Vietnam (then a French colony), and then arrived in Kunming via the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, a journey of more than 20 days. After arriving in Chuncheng, Yu Dejun wrote this letter to his colleague, the entomologist Yang Weiyi (1897-1972), to express his gratitude, thanks to Yang Weiyi's advance arrangement, he obtained a letter of introduction from the French ambassador, otherwise the materials might be taxed. Yang Weiyi was also a student of Hu Xianhua, who studied in France, and entered the Jingsheng Institute in October 1934 to engage in insect research, serving as a technician in the Animal Department, and later served as the acting director of the Jingsheng Institute.
Yu Dejun and his party made slight adjustments in Kunming and will continue to move north after purchasing travel supplies, negotiating remittances and safety preparations. The three central points of the collection work are Muli in Sichuan, Zhongdian in Yunnan and Adunzi in Yunnan. The spices cinnamon, jade cinnamon, and Pu'er tea that Yang Weiyi asked to buy have been bought, and Wang Qiwu will bring them with him when he returns to Beiping after finishing his work in Yunnan in the middle of this month. In addition, the collecting insects that are in care will also try their best to collect. If the creatures have any new situations, they also want to tell more.
The letter began to say that the tax exemption is due to the "huge amount of money collected in Yunnan", and the funds collected in Yunnan are not abundant, and the funds collected in Yunnan this time also depend on the funding of the Royal Horticultural Society, and the colleagues of the Jingsheng Institute are well aware of this, so they prepare in advance to avoid unnecessary expenses. In the next two years, the investigation team will go deep into the hinterland of Yunnan, and it is inconvenient to carry a large amount of cash with it, so it is necessary to "negotiate remittances". Yu Dejun immediately found that the way to remit money was not feasible, and he immediately wrote to the Yunnan Provincial Department of Education, requesting that a supporting document be issued in order to exchange three thousand yuan for Yunnan half-open coins. At that time, the Nationalist government uniformly used legal tender, but in Yunnan, far away from the Emperor of The High Mountains, the Semi-open Silver Dollar minted by Dian was the local standard currency, and the circulation was widespread, especially in the border ethnic minority areas. Yunnan is inaccessible, bandits are often infested, and without local support to ensure public order, the necessary security needs for the work cannot be guaranteed. Previously, "the first person to collect plants in Yunnan" Zhong Guan (1868-1940) suffered a cut while working in Xiangyun, and the money, clothing and important instruments were looted; Jiang Ying (1898-1982), a botanist sent by the Natural History Museum of the Academia Sinica, was swept away by Ma Fu when he arrived at Simao, and the inspection was forced to be canceled; and Chen Mou (1903?), an assistant professor at the College of Agriculture of Central University (1903?). –1935) was also killed while contracting an illness at work. Therefore, when Jingsheng's office dispatched the first investigation team, Hu Xianhua personally reported to Long Yun, chairman of Yunnan Province, hoping that the local county governments would "dispatch police at their discretion and provide all conveniences for travel and transportation." For safety reasons, Cai Xitao also carried a shotgun and two thousand rounds of ammunition. However, the collection road is still dangerous, and "bear and leopard footprints abound.". After the rain, "the body was so hot that I couldn't move at all, so I had to be tied up and carried on a wooden frame." On his way to Zhaotong, where the geologist Zhao Yazeng (1899-1929) was killed by bandits, Cai Xitao felt that "human life is small." (Hu Zonggang: "A Brief History of Plant Research in Yunnan", Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press, p. 34) And Wang Qiwu, a party sent by Jingsheng, came to "the western part of Yunnan, which was originally an area where severe dysentery and intestinal suffocation and other diseases were rampant (that is, commonly known as miasma)", and had to take "cinchona second cake every day to avoid disease". (Hu Zonggang: Historical Manuscript of the Institute of Static Biological Investigation, Shandong Education Publishing House, 75 pp.)
Yu Dejun and his party of five people planned to go to Lijiang and divide into three groups to go to Muli, Zhongdian and Adunzi to collect plants. Muli was originally under the jurisdiction of Yunnan, located in the southwest of Sichuan, west of Gongga Mountain, south of the Jinsha River, wild plant resources are very rich, Locke once collected more than 30,000 plant specimens here. Muri was also the starting point of one of Locke's most famous expeditions, and today's well-known "Shangri-La" originated from this trekking expedition. Zhongdian was renamed Shangri-La in 2001. The Hengduan Mountains, jinsha river, Lancang river and Nu river form three parallel rivers and deep canyons here, which is the area with the richest plant species and the most significant species differentiation in China. Adunzi, now known as Deqin. There are thirteen peaks with an average altitude of more than 4,800 meters, such as the main peak of Meili Snow Mountain, Kawagbo Peak, which together with the Jinsha River and the Lancang River have formed a spectacle of "overlapping peaks and undulating peaks, canyon rapids". There are many kinds of local plant resources, rare birds and animals, and China's endemic species, the second national treasure, the Yunnan golden snub-nosed monkey, lives here.
Yu Dejun's collection process is almost not described in the current public information. Judging from the results alone, it is very satisfactory. "In total, more than 10,000 plant specimens and more than 2,700 plant seeds have been collected in the past year." In addition, "all kinds of invertebrates were collected, one hundred and seventy-seven pieces." (The Ninth Annual Report of the Jingsheng Institute, reproduced from Hu Zonggang: "Historical Manuscript of the Jingsheng Biological Survey Institute", Shandong Education Publishing House, p. 83) Perhaps some of these animals were specially collected at the request of Yang Weiyi.
For Jingsheng to come to Yunnan for collection work, Cai Xitao once made an image analogy: "There is a big look of children entering the candy shop." "Young Chinese botanists collected more than 1,800 kinds of new plants in Yunnan, and the four botanists with the largest number of collections, Wang Qiwu, Feng Guolin, Yu Dejun and Cai Xitao, all came from the Jingsheng Institute, contributing 80% of them to more than 1,400 kinds. Among the plants collected by Yu Dejun, one of the world's three major natural flowers, the alpine flower primrose specimen has 400 numbers, and the seed specimen is 130 numbers. After the study of botanist Chen Fenghuai (1900-1993), one of the new species from The Gongshan Mountain, three thousand meters above sea level, was named Primula yuana with Yu Dejun's surname to commemorate his outstanding collection achievements in Yunnan.
Working in ethnic minority areas, Yu Dejun paid great attention to living in harmony with the local people. In the following year, in addition to working in Gaoligong Mountain, Lijiang River and Dulongjiang, Yu Dejun took the initiative to cut thorns for residents, repair the zipline of the ladder bridge, and cut down trees to support the trellis. Kong Zhiqing, the Dulong tongsi hired by the investigation team in the local area, was the first primary school graduate in the clan, and this young man was resolute and hard-working, and he encountered "cliffs and waterfalls, rolling stones roaring" on the way, as well as continuous heavy rain, all fearless, even when his porter died in danger. During the day, Kong Zhiqing led the leading team to climb the snowy mountains and over the cliffs, and at night helped dry the specimen paper, and actively learned Chinese characters. After the gathering, Yu Dejun specially went to visit Kong Zhiqing's father, and after obtaining his consent, arranged for Kong Zhiqing to study at the Dali Political School and also gave financial support. Five years later, Kong Zhiqing returned to his hometown and became the first intellectual in the history of the Dulong people to study in the interior, and later made positive contributions to the peaceful liberation of Dulongjiang and Gongshan. In the decades that followed, whenever Kong Zhiqing went to Beijing for a meeting, he would bring his local products to visit Yu Dejun, and Yu Dejun would use Beijing's high-end dim sum as a gift in return. The friendship between the two lasted a lifetime.
At the end of the two-year Yunnan collection period, Yu Dejun joined the Yunnan Institute of Agriculture, Forestry and Botany in Heilongtan, Kunming. In order to raise the cost of field expeditions, Yu Dejun and his colleagues introduced excellent tobacco varieties from the United States, big gold dollars, personally built flue-cured tobacco houses, successfully domesticated and mass-produced in Yunnan, and once became the main variety of Tobacco in Yunnan, whose quality represented the highest level of Chinese tobacco leaves at that time, providing quality assurance for Yunnan to become a major tobacco province in China.
The Beiping Biological Survey Institute, which organized the Yunnan Biological Survey, was one of the most accomplished scientific research institutions in the early days of China, and its purpose was to investigate and study domestic biology. Seeing foreign scholars collecting in China without restriction has strongly stimulated the sense of sovereignty of Chinese scientists. They "mourn the loss of national rights and fear the dispersal of academic materials." In addition to actively promoting national legislation, he also "tried to rise up in an effort to cultivate his own land with his own strength in order to obtain good results." The plant collection work in Yunnan is also a clear proof. As the geologist Greep put it, "Countless scientists who work for the advancement of truth and intellect are immortal." ”
Xu pride