Inside page of The Chronicle of Mountains and Rivers: Zang Mu's Wild Diary.
Not long ago, I read "Yamakawa Kiyuki: Zang Mu's Wild Diary", nearly 400 plants, fungus sketches, a large number of landscapes and architectural watercolors, and beautiful Itabashi handwriting on the picture... The author's versatility makes it different from the usual scientific research notes, becoming a poetic and aesthetically rich work, which makes me experience the joy of reading freely and fullly.
This 500,000-word work is the diary of Zang Mu, a mycologist and researcher at the Kunming Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Hengduan Mountains and other places, dating from 1975 to 2000, spanning 1/4 century.
The whole book is composed of investigation notes and hand-drawn drawings, rich and broad, in addition to the professional field of topography, vegetation types, fungal species, specimen information and other aspects of knowledge, but also involved folklore, religion, literature, art, architecture and many other fields, can be called a book with a distinct naturalist character.
Reading this book, you will first admire the author's profound and exquisite professionalism. Between the words, you can read a kind of ease, confidence and stretching that is ready for me. There are many kinds of wild plants seen in the scientific expedition, and most of the authors know and can tell the classification and growth habits of their family species, and write down Latin literary names at will. After reading these, let's look at his deeds: starting from scratch, leading the research team to conduct a comprehensive field investigation and collection of fungi, lichens and mosses in Yunnan and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, creating the Herbarium of Hidden Flowers of the Kunming Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and pioneering the comprehensive research of advanced fungi in southwest China... It is in response to the phrase "there is no vain man under his name".
The author's excellent writing skills make this kind of highly professional content no longer hinder the reading of readers outside the industry. He investigated fungi in the Xishuangbanna and Ailao Mountains of Yunnan Province, "and collected an interesting fungus that fell in the genus Bamboo And The Ghost Pen." It does not have a peculiar smell, it has a slight aroma, the lid is very large, and the fungus curtain is shorter than the lid, and there is a membranous differentiation, resembling a pen fungus, but the whole plant and the lid are pink, which is a big discovery here." Typical professional knowledge, but the image and rhythm conveyed between the words, there is clearly a beautiful flash, anyone is willing to read it.
Field expeditions, all day long trekking through the mountains and forests, looking up at the thousands of forms of nature, some passages in the book are very moving. "The mountains are nearly autumn, the plains next to the lake are filled with wild chrysanthemums, the inflorescences are yellow and white, the open is clean and elegant, and the trees are flat and far away. The understory fungus Liangshan Cordyceps is also found here. "In the swaying shadow of the trees, there are even several rays of sunlight, which are shot in by the canopy, and the qingqi is extreme, jumping stones and choosing steps, although there is a slight heat outside the forest, but the forest is particularly quiet, cool and pleasant." These texts are flexible, elegant and concise, reminiscent of Xu Xiake's travelogues, or some of the best works in the Ming and Qing landscape sketches.
Field expeditions can be difficult, especially in the days when the author wrote these diaries. Wind and rain, frost and snow, vines and roses, mosquito bites, hard work during the day to collect specimens, into the night to wear mud and sweat to bake and make, but between the lines is a school of ease, willing as a rapture. This attitude, of course, is related to the love of the profession, but besides that, is there something else, like a wine song, fermenting his poetry?
The answer is clear! The rich and profound humanistic qualities give the author a unique vision of the nature of mountains and rivers. They are composed of both a devotion to literature and art, as well as extraordinary insights in the fields of history, religion, folklore and so on. With them as a reserve of souls, he not only examines things in the professional field as far as he can, but also appreciates a great book of heaven and earth and a long volume of humanities. Mrs. Zang Mu wrote an article about Zang Mu's love of calligraphy and painting since childhood, and when he graduated from high school, he had the idea of applying for art colleges, and he also liked to collect, obsessed with stamp collecting, obsessed with Peking Opera, and had a wide range of interests. Long-term cultivation of Han Yong naturally contributes to the construction of its aesthetic personality realm.
Under such a gaze, looking up and down, nothing is beautiful. The beauty of Lugu Lake made him lament that Fan Li Sushi had not been boating here, and how many Strange Texts and Good Sentences had been lost; the Nanwen River "mountains are green and red, such as Van Gao's colorful paintings, red and green, and there is this beautiful Danqing in nature", and the boundary between nature and art has disappeared in his eyes. Everything in the world, the size of Sumire, the smallness of mustard seeds, can become the object of his aesthetics, the material of his thoughts, and also the basis for the realization of life: "Before going to sleep at night, go out and rest less." See the bright moon half wheel, high hanging in the night sky, surrounded by mountains, springs babbling, from all sides, the sound of water without noise, the sense of cosmic tranquility, silence also. Man is a pleasure in loneliness, and man is not willing to be lonely is a higher level of fun. ”
Reading this book, you can see a "tong" word everywhere, which is integrated and uninhibited. Mountains and rivers, nature, life and society, together as the object of his emotional projection, Shu Ji can be described as "washing away all things, cages and forms". The scientific spirit and humanistic feelings together constitute the background of his life.
People who love this book, what they gain from it is not limited to the knowledge in the field of botany, but more should be a curiosity about the universe, an ability to comprehensively construct knowledge, and an admiration and pursuit of a vast and broad life realm.