At 1:48 p.m. on November 19, 2022, the giant panda "Tuantuan" presented to Taiwan by Chinese mainland stopped beating and left this world.
After the news was released, netizens on both sides of the strait expressed endless condolences over the death of "Tuantuan". Among these people are many political figures and cultural figures on the island. The Taipei Zoo personnel who took care of the "Tuantuan" were even more grief-stricken.
However, while most of the Chinese people are immersed in grief, there are always some discordant voices. The most emblematic figure is the so-called cultural celebrity Long Yingtai, who posted several tweets on Facebook about "Tuantuan".
In Long Yingtai's view, the motherland's emotional move of sending Taiwan's giant pandas "reunion" and "round circle" is conditional; he believes that the focus of the motherland's reunification lies not in the DPP, but in the so-called "civilization."
In addition, Long Yingtai also said that in addition to "tuantuan" and "yuanyuan" given to Taiwan, there are 30 dove trees. The giant panda and dove tree were discovered and brought into scientific research by the French missionary and naturalist Tan Weidao, and have been slowly recognized by people around the world since then.
In Long Yingtai's view, if the giant panda is a "civilization" and a "national treasure" species, it is also the first Westerners to discover this "civilization", not the first to discover Chinese.
Not only was it not discovered by Chinese, but the so-called credit of Westerners discovering the giant panda has been selectively forgotten by the now "xenophobic" "Boxers".
From Long Yingtai's tweets, he expressed his preference for the so-called "Western civilization" between the lines. However, as a cultural celebrity, Long Yingtai pretends to be deaf and dumb about the history of giant pandas, which makes people feel his ignorance.
So, what is the history of the discovery of giant pandas? Is Long Yingtai ignorant? Or is it a deliberate distortion of historical truth? Hello everyone, I'm Lao Qin, today's content let's learn about the history of the discovery of giant pandas.
The real name of Tan Weidao mentioned by Long Yingtai is Armand Davide, who was born in France in 1826 and is an authentic Frenchman.
In 1848, Armand Davide was ordained priest. At that time, although Armand Davide was only 22 years old, he showed a strong interest in natural science, so Armand Davide would also take the initiative to collect some plant and zoological materials while preaching.
In 1862, at the age of 36, Armand Davide joined the French Mission, and soon he came to China, then the Qing Empire.
The so-called mission was actually a French mission, the main task of which was to conduct diplomatic relations on behalf of the French government at that time and the Qing Empire.
But many people should know that at that time, some pastors from Western countries came to China, nominally preaching, but secretly came for Chinese cultural relics, wanting to take some Chinese things back, to put it bluntly, some of these people are actually spies, or even a thief, essentially a robber.
When Armand Davide came to China, he quickly gave himself a Chinese name, Tan Weidao. After Tan Weidao arrived in China, he was quickly fascinated by Chinese culture.
So he secretly began collecting materials for a natural history museum in France, mainly Chinese zoology, botany, geology and paleontology, as well as specimens.
After inquiring, when Tan Weidao learned that there were many animal species in Baoxing, Sichuan, and even some rare animal species that people did not know about, he decided to find a time to personally go to Baoxing, Sichuan to collect these animal information.
In 1869, Tan Weidao happily set out from Shanghai to the Baoxing area of Sichuan. When he passed by a rural family, he accidentally saw a strange animal skin hanging on the wall of this family surnamed Li, with black and white fur, which was very good-looking.
Tan Weidao immediately realized that this animal skin was the fur of a rare animal. So he asked the owner of the family surnamed Li what the name of the animal was.
The farmer surnamed Li told Tan Weidao that this animal is called "white bear", and the locals also call it "flower bear", and because this "flower bear" likes to eat bamboo, it is also called "bamboo bear".
The farmer surnamed Li also told Tan Weidao that this "white bear" is particularly docile, well-behaved, easy to get along with humans, and never harms humans.
Tan Weidao, as a Frenchman with a slight attainment in natural sciences, quickly became interested after listening to the story of the farmer surnamed Li, and planned to continue to look for this animal. Coupled with his mission to collect rare animal and plant materials for the French Museum of Nature, he immediately felt that this "white bear" animal was likely to become an interesting new species in the history of science, and it could fill a gap in the field of world animal research.
In fact, at that time, many Western scientists came to China to travel, ostensibly under the guise of scientific investigation and exploration, but in fact wanted to get China's rare culture, cultural relics, animals and plants to the West.
After Tan Weidao realized the importance of the "white bear", he immediately took action, and he paid more than 20 hunters in the local area to start hunting in the mountains.
After the hunters got the money, they went into the mountains to start rounding up. Soon, the hunters caught a "little white bear".
However, on the way to Tan Weidao, the hunters actually killed the "little white bear" in order to facilitate the lifting out of the mountain.
At that time, it was the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty, and the people of the Qing Empire did not know that this "little white bear" would become a "national treasure" of China, and the Qing did not have any laws such as animal protection.
Therefore, the hunters do not care about the life of the "white bear". Tan Weidao was disappointed to see that it was a "little white bear" that showed no signs of life, so he asked the hunters to continue to catch a living "white bear" for himself.
The hunters began a second roundup.
On May 4, 1869, the hunters gave a newly caught "white bear" to Tan Weidao, who was so excited that he quickly named the "white bear" "Black and White Bear". And he decided to bring the "black and white bear" back to France.
If Mr. Tan's move succeeds, he will likely be the first to take pandas out of China. However, just as he happily walked with the "black and white bear" on the way to Chengdu, the giant panda became dying because it could not withstand the subversion of travel, and its life appeared extremely fragile.
Tan Weidao saw that he could not transport the giant panda back to France alive, so he did not stop and immediately decided to make a specimen and bring it back to France.
After returning to France, Tan Weidao sent the "black and white bear" panda specimen to the National Museum in Paris, France, which quickly caused a sensation.
At the time, the museum's director was Miller Edwards, who was also a well-informed naturalist. After he saw the specimen of the "black and white bear", he felt that this "black and white bear" was neither a bear nor a cat, but in terms of size, it was similar to the kitten bear found in Tibet, China, and was a larger cat bear.
Therefore, the French officially named China's "white bear" "big cat bear". Soon, as the frequency and time of the "Big Cat Bear" exhibitions increased, the Western world expressed a fanatical preference for this "Big Cat Bear" from China, and then a group of so-called Western explorers, safari hunters and museum specimen collectors set foot on the road to China, their real goal was to prepare to poach the magical "Big Cat Bear" animal from China.
However, none of these Western robbers brought the "big cat bear" out of China alive, and basically they were all made into "big cat bear" specimens before bringing them outside China.
Since then, explorers from many Western countries such as Germany and Britain have come to China to hunt "big cat bears", and then make specimens to bring back, and for a time, "big cat bear" animal specimens appeared in museums in many Western countries.
Among these robbers were many big names, such as Theodore Roosevelt and Kermit Roosevelt, the two sons of US President Roosevelt, who also came to Sichuan, China, and after discovering a "big cat bear", shot and killed it, and then made a specimen to bring back to the United States.
On November 9, 1936, Ruth, a 36-year-old American woman, arrived in the Wenchuan area of Sichuan with an expedition of nearly 20 people to search for the big cat bear, and they found a "big cat bear" cub, only 9 weeks old, in a tree hole.
Ruth was so excited that she fed the big bear cub with the bottle she carried with her, and named it "Precious Thing". And successfully brought this big cat bear cub to Shanghai.
After that, with the help of American friends, Ruth successfully passed customs, and finally took the big cat bear out of China and came to the United States without risk. Ruth also became the first person in the world to bring a live cat bear out of China.
Through the above description, it is not difficult for all of us to see that China's understanding, protection and cognition of giant pandas have been quite lacking for a long time. Whether it is official or private, the protection measures for giant pandas are almost zero, hunters can hunt at will without being convicted, and the government lacks the corresponding rules and regulations and even legal provisions to protect giant pandas, which eventually led Western robbers to come to China under the guise of various scientific research to steal giant pandas.
According to statistics, in just five years, from 1936 to 1941, the Americans stole nine giant pandas from China. After the end of World War II, the British were even more crazy, and even organized a huge team of more than 200 people to Wenchuan, Sichuan, through diplomatic permission, to round up giant pandas.
However, perhaps God wanted to punish the bandits, and they also ended up capturing only one giant panda. Only then did the Kuomintang government realize the importance of protecting giant pandas and began restricting foreigners from entering China to hunt giant pandas.
However, despite the restrictions imposed by the Kuomintang, the hunting of giant pandas by foreigners has not disappeared, and it still happens from time to time. According to historical statistics, in the area of Caopo Township, Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province alone, before 1949, more than 20 giant pandas were purchased by people from the United Kingdom, the United States and other Western countries, which once caused the endangered and dangerous situation of giant pandas.
But the situation soon improved after 1949, and soon after the founding of New China, giant pandas were included in legal protection. Since then, giant pandas have truly become national treasure-level animals, and at the same time, they have also become the most precious cultural messengers for the people of the mainland and the world to transmit feelings and forge friendships.
After talking about the history of giant pandas, let's talk about "tuantuan" and "yuanyuan".
In 2005, Lien Chan, then chairman of the Kuomintang, visited the mainland of the motherland, and the mainland of the motherland then decided to send two giant pandas to Taiwan.
In 2006, CCTV Spring Festival Gala solicited the names of the two giant pandas, and finally after the enthusiastic participation of more than 100 million viewers, the two giant pandas were named "Tuan Tuan" and "Yuanyuan", but for various reasons, it was three years after the arrival of "Tuan Tuan" and "Yuan Yuan" in Taiwan.
Although he went three years late, he could not resist the Taiwan compatriots' love for "tuantuan" and "yuanyuan." However, something unfortunate happened.
On November 19 this year, the 18-year-old "Tuantuan" died of illness, according to the maximum life expectancy of a giant panda of 30 years, "Tuantuan" Xuenian was still a young man, and died young, which made countless people extremely regretful.
At this time, Long Yingtai took Western civilization to say something, believing that the discovery of giant pandas was first discovered by Westerners, and regarded the history of Westerners poaching pandas as a Western civilization.
As cultural celebrities, for such people, we can only say that they have a yellow-skinned face, but they have a heart that kneels and licks Westerners, which is really disgusting and disgusting.
Finally, I want to say that no matter how Long Yingtai kneels and licks Western civilization, as a unique "national treasure" of China, whether it is yesterday, today or tomorrow, the Eastern culture condensed on it will continue to shine, which is bound to overshadow those outside the pure yang.
I'm Lao Qin, thank you for watching.