90 years ago, Chinese New Year's Eve, he stayed overnight in the Tianshan Mountains

Author | Wu Xiaodong

On Chinese New Year's Eve Night 90 years ago, such a scientist, in order to collect plateau plant specimens and develop Chinese botany, spent the Chinese New Year's Eve of 1932 in the Tianshan Mountains with an average altitude of 4,000 meters, and continued his investigation work during the Spring Festival.

He is Liu Shenchen, a famous Chinese botanist and one of the pioneers and founders of modern Chinese botany, and is known as "Nanhu Bei Liu" in the field of botany with the biologist Hu Xianhua.

His life spanned Eurasia, leaving the footprints of scientific investigation on the roof of the plateau and the wisdom of production and construction in the forest desert.

Liu Shenchen's academic life presents us with the theme of the times of science serving the country upheld by modern scientists.

Ten years in France became the first Chinese to study the vegetation of France

In 1897, Liu was born into a poor peasant family in Muping County, Shandong Province.

After witnessing and experiencing the withering and turmoil of the society in the late Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, he set in his heart the ambition of serving the country scientifically.

In 1918, at the age of 21, Liu Shenchen was admitted to the Baoding Higher Craft Preparatory Class for Studying in France.

From 1920 onwards, he began a 10-year study abroad career in France.

He studied and researched in botany at the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Lancy, the Agricultural College of Montpellier, the Faculty of Science of the University of Clement, the Faculty of Science of the University of Lyon and the Faculty of Science of the University of Paris.

Studying diligently, studying hard, no weekends and holidays, and even once being locked in the herbarium because he forgot to leave work, he laughed and said, "This time you can see enough."

In the past ten years, Liu Shenchen has carried bread and plant specimen clips almost all over the famous mountains and rivers of France.

In particular, the distribution of vegetation in the Gaussian region in south-central France was carefully investigated, more than 25,000 plant specimens were collected, and the problems of "how to transition Mediterranean vegetation to the central mountainous area, what plant communities are in gaussian mountains, what are the fauna characteristics and ecological characteristics of these plant communities", and in 1929, he was awarded a doctorate of science in France with the dissertation of "Research on the Plant Geography of The Gaussian Mountains in France".

"The French students didn't know the high and low plants of France as well as he did," was his mentor Lenovard's praise for Liu's work.

Grinau, an academician of the French Academy of Sciences and a famous geologist, said: "In the past, Europeans went to China to investigate and study China's natural history. Now Chinese to start studying scientific problems in Europe, a shift of interest. Mr. Liu was the first Chinese to study vegetation in Western Europe, specifically In France. ”

In 1972, the Chinese scientific delegation visited a French botanical research institute, and this sentence was mentioned again, which is enough to see that the French academic community highly recognizes Liu Shenchen's research work.

While carrying out research work, he actively unites international students to promote the development of Biology in China.

In 1924, he joined the "New Chinese Agricultural Association" founded in Lancy, France, and served as an officer of the Plant Pathology Group.

In 1925, he initiated the establishment of the "Chinese Society of Biological Sciences" with international students at the University of Lyon and served as the general secretary of the society.

In 1929, Liu Shenchen co-edited the "Compilation of Chinese Plant Literature" with Lin Rong and Liu Hou, and extensively collected and sorted out foreign works, papers and magazines on Chinese plant research for chinese colleagues to refer to.

Staying overnight in tianshan mountain obtained the earliest batch of plateau vegetation scientific data on the mainland

In 1929, at the invitation of Li Shizeng, president of the National Peking Research Institute, Liu Shenchen returned to the motherland with the ideal and belief that "the motherland needs me", brought the plant specimens and books obtained from France, and the advanced scientific concepts formed in the past 10 years.

In the face of the reality of poor domestic botanical research and the lack of local research materials in China, in 1931, he participated in the "Sino-French Northwest Academic Expedition" composed of Chinese and French scientists to investigate and collect vegetation in the plateau area.

After the delegation was disbanded, he went deep into the Tianshan Mountains alone four times.

In order not to affect the progress of the expedition, he spent the Chinese New Year's Eve and Spring Festival of 1932 in the Tianshan Mountains at an altitude of 4,000 meters.

The expedition collected more than 4,500 specimens of plateau plants, which is the earliest batch of precious scientific data in this part of the mainland and laid the foundation for the study of botany in China.

The potential difficulties and dangers of conducting expeditions in inaccessible highland areas can be imagined.

Once, Liu Shenchen encountered several bandits, saw his face full of stubble, messy hair, tattered clothes, and his belongings were only old newspapers and specimens of flowers and trees.

After this scientific expedition, Liu Shenchen was praised by Zhang Jinfu, who was once vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, as "having the spirit of Tang monks learning from the West".

For nearly two years, from May 1931 to the beginning of 1933, apart from the two boxes of specimens sent back by the trustees, the family and colleagues had almost no news of Liu Shenchen, until one day they received a telegram from India asking for travel expenses.

In order to promote the development of modern Chinese science, Liu Shenchen's scientific spirit of risking his life to investigate in the mountains has set a brilliant example for contemporary scientists.

Traveling to four places to promote the rapid development of China's botanical undertakings

In 1929, after Liu Shenchen returned to China, he participated in the establishment of the Institute of Botany of the National Peking Research Institute and ran it for nearly 20 years.

At the same time, the first botanical garden in the history of Chinese botany was created in Beiping Wannu Garden, which was used to cooperate with the experimental and research work of the institute.

In the years since, he has successively established botanical gardens in Wugong, Shaanxi, Kunming, Yunnan, and Northeast China.

Wherever he went, the seeds of botanical research spread.

In 1936, Liu Led the Institute of Botany to move west and established the Northwest China Botanical Survey.

A large number of northwest plant specimens were collected in the Qinling Mountains, Qinba Basin, Guanzhong Plain and other places.

In 1941, Liu Shenchen went to Kunming again to organize the Kunming office of the Institute of Botany, and then carried out plant surveys in the southwest region.

In 1950, he was invited to work at the Northeast Agricultural College and carried out specimen collection and investigation and research in Changbai Mountain, Daxing'anling, Xiaoxing'anling and inner Mongolian grasslands.

Since then, Liu Shenchen has taken root here until the end of his life.

This kind of large-scale macroscopic investigation across Eurasia and the whole of China allowed Liu Shenchen to witness the colorful changes of flora and fauna, and also became an important foundation for the formation of his academic thought.

In the 1960s, on the basis of summarizing the accumulation of knowledge throughout his life, Liu Shenchen pioneered two emerging sub-disciplines of botany in the mainland, "dynamic botany" and "historical plant geography".

This is the culmination of Liu Shenchen's lifelong academic research, and it is also the highest representative of his academic achievements, which has promoted the cause of Chinese botany to a higher level.

At the National Science Conference held in 1978, the two achievements of "Research on Theory of Forest Harvesting Renewal" supported by dynamic botany and "Design and Construction of Railway Construction in The Northwest Desert Region" won the Major Scientific and Technological Achievement Award, which is the greatest recognition and affirmation of Liu Shenchen's academic life by the state and society.

Protecting forests and controlling sands Write articles on the land of the motherland

"Articles should not only be written on paper, but also on the ground" is the creed that Liu Shenchen insists on engaging in scientific research, which in turn makes his academic thinking have more vivid vitality.

Under the guidance of this concept, he applied the research results to solve practical problems such as forest harvesting and sand control and wind protection, and made important contributions to the production and construction of New China.

In the 1950s, Liu Shenchen advocated the logging method of "selective logging and natural regeneration of red pine forests" in the Xiaoxing'anling forest area, and carried out a large number of investigations and experiments to confirm his views, and finally obtained the central directive of "effectively changing the wrong practice of re-mining and light manufacturing in the forest area", retaining the valuable forest resources of the Xiaoxing'anling Red Pine Forest.

In 1953, Liu Shenchen established China's first sand control positioning test station in Zhanggutai, Liaoning Province, in the northeast and west.

When the Baolan Railway was built in 1956, as the deputy captain of the sand control team of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in the face of the endless flowing sand dunes in the Shapotou section of Ningxia, as well as the current situation of large wind and sand and little precipitation, he proposed a combination of grass, irrigation and qiao on the basis of studying the growth of local vegetation, subdued the rapidly flowing sand dunes, ensured the timely completion of the railway, and was praised by Li Minggang of the former Lanzhou Desert Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as "the founder of the research work on sand control in the mainland".

(Author Affilications:School of Marxism, Northwest University)