Article reprinted from "Gezhi Discourse Forum"
As a Chinese,
We may not be so fully aware of the beauty of China,
Nor do they realize how much more beauty can bring us behind it.
Geng Huajun· Founder of the Planet Institute
Gezhi Dao No. 52 | May 24, 2020 Beijing
The theme I share with you today is rediscovering the beauty of China.
Why rediscovery?
Because as Chinese, we may not fully realize the beauty of China, nor do we realize how much we can gain behind the beauty.
Personally, for example, I founded the Planet Institute in 2016 and began to engage in geography popularization. Many members of our team are from the geography and geology class, but I am not personally, so these four years have also been a process for me to re-understand China.
In these four years, I have three main gains.
The first harvest: true knowledge
Completed: 10% //////////
The first harvest is true knowledge.
Two examples. First example, how do we understand China's autumn?
Autumn in the eyes of literary scholars is sad and sentimental, but autumn in the eyes of geographers is a general mobilization of energy. As the Earth orbits the Sun, the area of vertical sunlight travels south from the equator, at which point the energy received by the Northern Hemisphere decreases significantly.
▲ The arrival of the autumn equinox indicates
CaliforniaAcademy of Sciences
In an astronomical sense, autumn arrives in the Northern Hemisphere. At this time, the deciduous plants will receive a signal of energy reduction, and they decide to shrink the battle line and shake off the leaves on their bodies, but it would be a pity if the leaves were lost in vain, so they also had to recover the energy in them.
How to recover energy?
Plants will decompose the chlorophyll in the leaves, and after decomposition, the orange-yellow carotene and yellow lutein will be revealed, so the leaves will become yellow, and in our eyes, there will be a scene of golden autumn.
There are also some deciduous plants that produce new pigments in the process of decomposing and recovering energy, such as anthocyanins. Anthocyanins appear red in the acidic cell fluid, so we see red leaves again.
▲ Source: Planet Research Institute
Deciduous plants can survive by recovering energy, but what about annual herbs?
Annual herbs are so weak that they often can't resist the cold and die, but they have already shifted their energy to another place — seeds.
Small seeds can withstand the cold, and can even survive for decades, and when the spring blooms in the coming year, it is a vigorous life.
Biennial and perennial plants transfer energy to the ground, forming metamorphic roots and metamorphosis stems underground. Potatoes, carrots, onions, sweet potatoes, etc. that everyone often eats belong to this category of plants.
▲ Source: Planet Research Institute
Perennial woody plants will be more bloody, they will inject energy into the seeds of the fruit, forming a variety of fruits, on the one hand can attract animals to help them spread and reproduce, on the other hand, they also provide a lot of delicacies for humans.
You can not only see the color of the plants, but also harvest seeds, roots, fruits, etc. These things are essentially the energy storage tanks formed by plants in the process of transferring energy, and when humans obtain these storage tanks, it is what we call the autumn harvest.
The reduction in energy will also prompt the animals to seize the time to eat wildly and grow, to paste the autumn fat.
Take the migratory birds that have finished the autumn fat as an example, and their body fat rate will reach more than 50%, which is much higher than the human body fat rate. It is this body fat rate that can support them to travel long distances, flying hundreds of kilometers, and even flying over the Himalayas, forming several large migratory bird passages in the autumn Chinese sky.
Therefore, the energy drives the autumn, the fields are fruitful, the earth changes color, the animals eat wildly, and the migratory birds flutter their wings and fly high. It is not depressed, it is not lonely, it is a full of energy mobilization.
After talking about the beautiful autumn, let's talk about poverty in China.
In 2011, the State Council's Poverty Alleviation Office designated 11 contiguous areas of extreme poverty, which together are equivalent to 15% of the total land area. We can understand these regions as the poorest 15 percent in China. By the end of 2017, a significant portion of China's more than 30 million poor people lived on the land.
China has been reforming and opening up for 40 years, but they have been excluded by rapid economic growth, prosperity has nothing to do with them, modern life has nothing to do with them. Many people will wonder, is it because they are lazy? Or is it because they're not smart enough?
In fact, none of them are because of the environment in which they live.
For example, in the karst region of southern China, in Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Chongqing and other places, a large number of soluble rocks are distributed on the surface, and the local precipitation is relatively abundant, and the rocks will be dissoluted when they encounter water, and will form peak forests, peak clusters, stone forests, as well as underground caves, dark rivers and other landscapes, geomorphology calls them karst landforms, or karst landforms.
This photo is of an undercurrent river in Qingzhen City, Guizhou Province, where there are many underground rivers that suddenly rush out of a cliff cave to form a waterfall. It's a very magical landscape, a great view of the karst landscape.
But karst can also be the culprit in creating poverty.
Why? Because these places have abundant precipitation, it is actually difficult to store water.
Many surfaces in the karst region have many holes. These holes are like bottomless pits, which will suck all this water away, and the ground will not be able to store water, thus causing drought. In addition, when the running water is sucked away, it will also take away the soil, and there will be a lack of arable land on the ground after the soil is lost.
This photo is of a peak cluster depression in Dahua County, Guangxi. There is some arable land, some soil left in this place, and the locals cultivate terraces here. The circle of terraced fields is known locally as the tornado land.
▲ Longfu Township, Du'an Yao Autonomous County
When we pull the camera higher, we will find that the whole earth is like this, full of potholes and fragments. It is conceivable that surviving here is very difficult, so we call this kind of poverty karst poverty.
So the "beauty" in our eyes is likely to be the "hard survival" of the locals.
Whether it's karst poverty or energy mobilization, this knowledge can help us to correctly understand the world, and this is my first harvest - true knowledge.
The second harvest: the feeling of home and country
Completed: 30% //////////
My second greatest gain is my home country.
Two more examples. The first example is Yunnan. Speaking of Yunnan, you will think of many beautiful words: "South of the Clouds", "Wind and Snow Moon", "Four Seasons Like Spring" and so on. In fact, behind these scenes, from a geographical point of view, is a great folding of time and space.
The first is the folding of space.
This is a satellite map of Yunnan. From this satellite image, you can see that there are many ravines in western Yunnan, which are scattered from northwest to southeast, similar to the skirt of the pleated skirt.
65 million years ago, the Indian Ocean plate and the Eurasian plate collided to form western Yunnan. The earth was squeezed and deformed, and then a series of mountains were uplifted, that is, the Hengduan Mountains of Yunnan. The Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and the well-known Meili Snow Mountain all belong to the Hengduan Mountain.
This very unique photo is on one side of the Yulong Snow Mountain at an altitude of more than 5,000 meters, and on the other side is the ancient city of Lijiang at an altitude of more than 2,000 meters, with a height difference of more than 3,000 meters but can appear in the same frame.
This photograph reflects a feature of Yunnan. We borrow the concept from the science fiction novel "Three-Body", the original relatively flat yunnan two-dimensional space, after being squeezed and folded and deformed, is more three-dimensional and three-dimensional.
This three-dimensional world can carry more rich landscapes, and the world-class landscape we know as the three rivers flowing together, as well as many, many alpine valleys, appear in Yunnan.
In addition to the folding of space, time in Yunnan is also folded.
This map shows the distribution of climate types in Yunnan. Yunnan is about 900 kilometers from north to south, but there are 7 climate zones and climate zones. Such a change is equivalent to compressing climate change from Hainan Island all the way to Heilongjiang into a province.
If you look specifically at a high mountain, you'll find that climate change from Hainan Island to Heilongjiang is compressed on a single mountain, within a range of just a few kilometers of height difference. This rich type of climate, dense climate change, offers more possibilities for the reproduction of living beings.
For example, when the ice age comes, animals and plants in other places may die in large numbers because they cannot withstand the cold, but animals and plants in Yunnan can find a relatively livable shelter through short horizontal migration and vertical migration. In this way, Yunnan can preserve many relict species from ancient times.
On the other hand, the folding of Yunnan space will form many relatively closed small habitats. These habitats are conducive to the production of new species, both new species and many ancient relict species, and Yunnan has become the most biodiverse region in the country.
The folding of space and the folding of time also have a great impact on human beings.
This photo is of a branch of the Hani people in Yunnan, called Yiche people. Women's clothing is very special, wearing crotch pants, similar to today's tights.
But this Hani tribe also has branches. The Hengduan Mountains in western Yunnan run in a north-south direction, and are also a corridor for ethnic migration, which can be used to migrate using the north-south direction of the mountains. In the process of migration, if people settle here, they will evolve into a breeding ground for a nation in a relatively closed environment.
Yunnan has become a national incubator. In fact, of the 56 members of the Chinese nation, 26 are suitable for living in Yunnan, so Yunnan has become the province with the largest variety of ethnic minorities in China.
So what is Yunnan? Yunnan is a time-space fold, it is a colorful human world created by a time-space fold. This is the charm of geography, which allows you to understand the land under your feet more deeply and love your hometown more.
On the one hand, we have this love, and on the other hand, we must maintain a sense of distress for some problems in our home country. The second example I would like to give of the home country is Lop Nur (Lop Nur).
Everyone knows that Lop Nur is a dead zone of drought and desolation, but it has not always been like this in history.
Lop Nur is located at the lowest depression in Xinjiang's Tarim Basin, surrounded by the Tianshan Mountains, Kunlun Mountains, and Argin Mountains, where rivers converge at low-lying areas. There was once a super large lake, which at its largest area exceeded 10,000 square kilometers.
What is this concept? At present, The largest lake in China, Qinghai Lake, is about 4,000 square kilometers, and if we compare it, we can imagine the vastness of the water surface of Lop Nur at that time.
This photo is a mirror of the sky in Bolivia, South America, a very beautiful landscape. Because the conditions are similar, it is possible that such a landscape has also appeared in the history of Lop Nur and the ancients who can see such a landscape must be very shocked.
About 5,000 years ago, a branch of the Western Europa people, the Tocharians, migrated here. This group settled here, opened up farmland, raised cattle and sheep, made leather boots out of cowhide, and woven felt hats from wool. This is the felt hat, and the style of this felt hat is very stylish.
The picture above is of the famous Little River Princess, named after her excavation in the Little River Cemetery. You can see what Princess Xiaohe is wearing: a felt hat on her head, leather boots on her feet, and a short skirt in the middle. It's a very fashionable dress, and this aesthetic of dressing will not be outdated even now.
But 3500 years ago, the Civilization of the Tocharians suddenly disappeared. Later, around the time of the Western Han Dynasty, another ancient country appeared, called Loulan. However, during the Wei and Jin Dynasties, Loulan disappeared again.
Many people will wonder what is the reason for the disappearance of the Tocharians and the disappearance of Loulan.
Some people think that it is the invasion of foreign enemies, and some people speculate that it is plague, but in fact, the most critical reason is the deterioration of the natural environment.
Lop Nur is a relatively fragile ecological environment, which is greatly affected by the outside. When the climate becomes slightly drier and colder, the water coming from upstream will decrease, affecting the local survival.
Another reason is that human activities here, such as the massive cutting of poplar wood, have destroyed the local environment, and the environment here is difficult to recover. After it could not be restored, human beings could only move out, so this civilization died.
So we can see that the deterioration of ecology will make any civilization a cultural relic.
Lop Nur is only a relatively special typical extreme case, and the larger environment will also face an existential crisis. If we do not treat nature well, one day we will also become cultural relics, and future archaeologists will point at us and say: "You see, the civilization of these people died out because of the deterioration of the natural environment in that year." ”
This is my second takeaway – the feeling of home and country, which will make you love this land very much and be full of worries about this land at the same time.
The third harvest: life
Completed: 60% //////////
The third harvest is to fall on my own personal gain, and this harvest is to explore the inspiration of Chinese geography for life.
Also to give an example, this example is Jiuzhaigou. When Jiuzhaigou struck a seven-magnitude earthquake in 2017, many people were worried about whether Jiuzhaigou would disappear as a result, but experts will know that Jiuzhaigou itself is the result of a variety of destructive forces.
The first force is glaciers.
▲ Source: Planet Research Institute
When the ice age came, a large number of glaciers developed in Jiuzhaigou, and glaciers would cut out wide glacial valleys on the ground. Jiuzhaigou has three ditches, and these three ditches are basically shaped by glaciers. The largest lake in Jiuzhaigou, Changhai, is also a moraine lake left behind by glaciers.
The second force is earthquakes, as well as collapses caused by gravity, mudslides, and so on.
In the photo is Norilang Waterfall. How did it come into being? It is the material after the collapse of the mountains on both sides that accumulates here, and finally forms an upright cliff surface, and the water flows over to form such a waterfall.
The sapphire-like Panda Sea was originally formed by glaciation, but later expanded its area due to the impact of the dammed material, forming its current appearance.
The third force is flowing water.
Jiuzhaigou also has a large number of soluble rocks. After the water dissolves the soluble rock, the calcium will be deposited along the way with the water flow, deposited on the trees at the bottom of the lake, and travertine will form. Travertine will grow a variety of microorganisms, microbial communities will have different colors, water will show a lot of colors, coupled with the brilliant colors of the surrounding plants, it will form a very brilliant color Jiuzhaigou known today.
It can be seen that Jiuzhaigou is a landscape like a work of art created by the combined forces of these glaciers, earthquakes, collapses, mudslides, and flowing water.
So we get an inspiration, all suffering is cultivation, all destruction is creation, and at the same time your life is like this, which is the inspiration of exploring geography for life.
So I have threefold gains in total: true knowledge, home country, and life.
A never-ending exploration of China's geography
Completed: 80% /////////
I have only been exploring for four years, and modern Chinese researchers and geographers have been exploring Chinese geography for more than a hundred years.
When it comes to Chinese geographers, many people may not be able to name a few names, but most people know Xu Xiake, a geographer of the Ming Dynasty.
For us, the ancient Chinese people's understanding of Chinese geography for thousands of years is completely incomparable with the centuries-old exploration of modern Chinese geographers. The harvest of this hundred years has been earth-shattering.
The geographer in this photo may not be known to many people, he is a geographer who was active a hundred years ago, his name is Zhang Xiangwen.
In 1909, he founded the Geological Society of China. The Geological Society of China is the predecessor of the Modern Chinese Geographical Society. The concept of the Qinling-Huai River as we know it now is not a very early concept of the north-south dividing line of China's physical geography, but was formally proposed by Zhang Xiangwen in 1924, less than a hundred years ago.
▲ Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Qinghai-Tibet Scientific Expedition
This photo is of us working on a glacier on a comprehensive scientific expedition to the Tibetan Plateau.
The first comprehensive scientific expedition to the Tibetan Plateau was about 40 years ago. It is only 40 years that we have a systematic understanding of the Tibetan Plateau for the first time; for the first time we know that the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau strengthens the East Asian monsoon; and for the first time that the collision of the Indian Ocean plate and the Eurasian plate shapes the three-step ladder of China.
These realizations are all things we have gained in this short period of time. As Chinese one of the reasons why many of us do not understand China is our lack of awareness. There are still many scientific cognitions that have not yet been transformed into public cognition, and they need to be popularized to the public, which requires us to do more science popularization work.
Chinese there is a second reason why we don't understand China, because this hundred years is the most drastic change in our country.
What do we need to do in this hundred years? We need to save the nation from peril in this hundred years; we need to solve the problem of food and clothing, the problem of development, and the need to make money and get rich in the past 100 years.
But now it's different, and you'll find that after we've gone through the subsistence stage, our needs are higher. Many people will realize that they need to re-understand China, use a scientific way, and explore China from a geographical perspective. This is the good fortune of our generation and the opportunity of our generation.
Why?
We look at it from the scale of one hundred years, and this hundred years of modern China is the largest surface shaping event on the blue planet, and there is no one. We have built a lot of infrastructure to connect the whole country, roads, railways, ports, bridges, aviation and other networks; there are all kinds of super projects that have never been seen before, such as the Three Gorges Project, the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, the West-to-East Gas Transmission; and the largest urban rise.
Such drastic changes in modern China are witnessed and experienced by our generation.
Such a drastic change in China is worth exploring, discovering, and recording.
Judging from the scale of 10,000 years, in the past 10,000 years, we have created the most splendid Chinese civilization, we have built villages, built villages and towns, built farmland, built many cities, and many historical and civilization relics are still vividly remembered on the land.
Such a splendid Chinese civilization is worth exploring, discovering, and recording.
From the scale of 65 million years, the collision of the Indian Ocean plate and the Eurasian plate in the past 65 million years has shaped the pattern of our current three-step ladder and shaped the landscape and water of China. The collision was essentially the most important orogenic event on the blue planet in hundreds of millions of years.
We have the world's largest number of extreme mountains, the world's largest center of glacial activity in low and middle latitudes, and the Asian water tower as the source of Asia's great rivers.
Such Chinese landscapes are worth exploring, discovering, and recording.
So we have a grand vision: we hope that one day, we will see All of China's snowy mountains; one day, we will see all of China's rivers; and one day, we will see all of China's cities.
This is what I share with you today and rediscover the beauty of China.
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