In Tianjin's Wudao Cultural Tourism Zone, which has beautiful scenery and profound historical heritage, a three-story European-style building with red walls and white windows is hidden in the bustling city, surrounded by greenery and low-key and quaint. This is the Tianjin Beijiang Museum, the predecessor of the Tianjin Natural History Museum.
As one of the earliest natural history museums in China, the Northern Xinjiang Museum is the only museum in the early days of mainland China that has completely preserved the original site, original building, original collection, original display cabinet and original historical documents, which can be called a "living fossil" in the history of Chinese museums.
On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and France and the Sino-French Year of Cultural Tourism, the museum welcomed more French guests.
A hundred years ago, the French naturalist Sang Zhihua came to China to carry out a 25-year "arduous and long" scientific expedition and established the Northern Xinjiang Museum. Due to its extremely rich and unique collections and fruitful academic achievements, the Northern Xinjiang Museum has been ranked as the world's "first-class museum" as early as the 30s of the 20th century, and has become a landmark project of Sino-French cultural exchanges and mutual learning.
After a hundred years, the Northern Xinjiang Museum was reopened. Today, the museum has a collection of more than 400,000 specimens and folk cultural relics, nourishing every Chinese and foreign visitor with vivid history and culture, and promoting mutual learning and common development of natural science and cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries.
On April 19, tourists listened to the explanation outside the Northern Xinjiang Museum and prepared to visit. (Photo by Hu Zhenze)
Wading through mountains and rivers to add pages to the world's "life history book".
Standing in front of the Northern Xinjiang Museum, the breath of history is blowing in the face. Through a green iron door, to the wide and bright exhibition hall, looking up, a well-preserved huge saber-toothed elephant skull fossil hanging directly above the foyer, four or five meters long a pair of tusks is very spectacular.
Climb up the stairs, and you will see all kinds of delicate animal and plant specimens made 100 years ago, including birds, leopards, spiders, insects, mushrooms, and ...... It's dizzying.
"There are more than 400,000 fossils and specimens in the categories of animals and plants, geology, rock and minerals, paleontology, and ancient humans, of which there are more than 110,000 insect specimens alone." Lu Xuan, a docent who has worked in the Northern Xinjiang Museum for ten years, introduced.
These precious natural science collections were mainly excavated and collected by Sang Zhihua. In March 1914, Sang Zhihua, then 38 years old, arrived in Tianjin with a heart of scientific exploration, and continued to carry out various scientific expeditions, covering a distance of about 50,000 kilometers.
"For 25 years, he traveled all over the northern territory of China, which is also the origin of the name 'Northern Xinjiang Museum'." Lu Xuan pointed to a hand-drawn map on the wall of Sang Zhihua's former residence and said, which was densely marked with the routes and footprints of previous Sang Zhihua's scientific expeditions, "It is not difficult to imagine what a difficult and long journey it was." ”
Everywhere Sang Zhihua went, he would draw various plans and stratigraphic profiles such as geology and landforms, site distribution, etc., and also record in detail all kinds of information such as history, humanities, and folk customs of the places he visited. Sang Zhihua's scientific expeditions in northern China are amazing in terms of long time, arduous journey, fruitful results, and spiritual perseverance.
On display in the exhibition hall is a small stone core with traces of artificial chiseling, discovered by Sang Zhihua in Qingyang, Gansu Province, which is the first Paleolithic cultural remains with accurate stratigraphic records found in China. Its discovery broke the assertion of German archaeologists that there was no Paleolithic existence in China, and opened the prelude to the archaeological research of the Paleolithic in China.
"This discovery has pushed the history of human beings on the land of China from thousands of years to tens of thousands of years, and has also made Sang Zhihua known as the pioneer and unveiler of Paleolithic archaeology in China." Zhang Caixin, director of the Tianjin Museum of Natural History (Northern Xinjiang Museum), said.
Not only that, when sorting out a pile of antelope tooth fossils and ostrich egg fragments collected by Sang Zhihua, a small incisor fossil was accidentally discovered. It was identified by Bu Dasheng, a Canadian anthropologist who was working at Peking Union Medical College Hospital at the time, and confirmed that it was a human tooth and named it "Hetao Man".
"The discovery of this tooth, which once grew in the mouths of ancient humans, has been buried in the sand layer on the banks of the Sarawusu River in Inner Mongolia for tens of thousands of years, and its discovery has opened the prelude to paleoanthropological archaeological research in China and even Asia." Zheng Min, director of the paleontology department of the Tianjin Museum of Natural History, talked about the value of this discovery.
The first to organize large-scale field excavations in China, the first to discover large-scale paleomammals in China, the first to discover paleolithic tools in China, the first to find paleohuman fossils in China, and the first to excavate in China using modern stratigraphic paleontological methods...... Sang Zhihua's many achievements have created a precedent for the study of mammalogy and paleolithic archaeology in China, making the Northern Xinjiang Museum a golden scientific and cultural business card of China, and constantly adding pages to the world's "life history book".
The vivid practice of the Northern Xinjiang Museum on the land of China has also encouraged and inspired a group of Chinese scientific research workers.
From the sensational Zhoukoudian Peking ape skull discovered in 1929, to the Zigong dinosaur fauna in the Jurassic, the Chengjiang biota in the Cambrian, and the Rehe biota in the Cretaceous, the world-class fossil treasure trove has been unveiled on the land of China.
Among the many exhibits in the Northern Xinjiang Museum, the fossilized skull model of "Peking Man" is one of the treasures of the museum. The fossil model of the skull of "Peking Man" in the collection of the Northern Xinjiang Museum is the earliest batch of models copied directly from the original specimens.
The Northern Xinjiang Museum has not only left us a large number of collections with important research value and a large number of precious documents, manuscripts, photographs and other materials, but also left us with a scientific spirit of perseverance, perseverance, and pragmatism across regional and cultural backgrounds.
This is the introduction of Sang Zhihua in the Northern Xinjiang Museum (photo by Li Ran)
Keep the treasure trove and add luster to Chinese and foreign scientific research
When Sang Zhihua first came to China, he set the goal of establishing a museum to house collections, conduct research, publish publications, organize materials, and set up an open exhibition room. With the increasing number of specimens collected, his plan was gradually realized with the help of various financial support. In 1922, the north building of the Northern Xinjiang Museum rose from the ground; In 1930, with the completion of the South Building, the complete layout of the "I-shaped" of the Northern Xinjiang Museum was finally formed.
"Sang Zhihua not only has the spirit of a Western scientist, but also has a strong sense of naturalism, and he basically left the cultural relics he collected in China." Every time she explains this, Lu Xuan will sigh with emotion. After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, Sang Zhihua, who had passed the age of sixtieth year, left China alone, and returned to France with only his luggage. Sang Zhihua left a large number of precious paleontological fossils and prehistoric cultural relics unearthed in the most glorious academic years in China, providing indispensable materials for in-depth research by later generations of scientists.
Based on a huge, complete, unique and highly valuable collection system, the Beijiang Museum has become a temple of science and a world-renowned academic research exchange center. It has communicated with many Chinese and foreign museums and scientific research institutions such as the French National Museum of Natural History, the London Museum of Natural History, and Tianjin Institute of Technology and Business, and jointly organized scientific research activities and exchanged collections.
Many international scholars have also traveled thousands of miles to the ancient country of the East to see the style of this museum. Lacroix, a professor of mineralogy at the Musée d'Natural History in Paris, visited the Northern Xinjiang Museum in 1926. French sinologist Birchhe, director of the American Museum of Natural History, Osborne, and American paleontologist Gu Lanjie also came here for exchanges in the 20s of the 20th century.
Sang Zhihua once recorded in his itinerary: "All experts and scholars who come to Tianjin also visit our institute to learn about China's natural resources...... Many well-known and well-known people have visited our hospital. ”
In order to make the collected specimens and cultural relics show greater academic research value, Sang Zhihua invited world-renowned experts and scholars to come to the Northern Xinjiang Museum for cooperation. Some of them study bird collections, some study elycoopterans, some are responsible for the preservation and cataloguing of plant specimens, and some are responsible for translation, publication and photography.
The famous French geologist and paleontologist De Rijin is one of them. At the invitation of Sang Zhihua, De Rijin came to the Northern Xinjiang Museum in 1923 and formed a French paleontological expedition with Sang Zhihua to carry out expedition activities and research work together.
They have conducted extensive scientific investigations in Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Hebei, Shanxi and Northeast China, collected a large number of mammalian fossils, stone tools and ancient human specimens, and participated in a large number of research work in the Northern Xinjiang Museum.
During his work at the Northern Xinjiang Museum, he published a total of 48 papers and monographs related to vertebrate fossils and stone tools collected by the Northern Xinjiang Museum, and established 10 new genera and 56 new species of mammalian fossils. Since then, he has represented China in many international scientific expeditions and academic conferences, and he believes that it is China that has made his scientific career.
De Rijin's scientific career in China has also influenced many Chinese archaeologists and paleontologists. Li Ji, an anthropologist and modern Chinese archaeologist, once said: "The work reports published by De Rijin are almost all demonstrative. Most of China's fossil experts, geologists and prehistoric archaeologists have been beneficially influenced by him. ”
Animal specimens in the Northern Xinjiang Museum (photo by Li Ran)
The famous paleolithic archaeologist Jia Lanpo said that De Rijin was his most beloved teacher; Yang Zhongjian, a geopaleontologist, also said that he was influenced by Derijin's scientific work.
Gu Li, a docent at the Northern Xinjiang Museum, said that by 1935, the Northern Xinjiang Museum had published 43 books and 74 works in other journals. Many of them have been included in the world's treasure trove of zoology, botany, and paleontology, and are still an important basis for examining the early scientific records of various branches of biology in northern China.
In 1938, due to war and other reasons, the Northern Xinjiang Museum entered a decades-long silence and gradually faded out of people's sight. But fortunately, the Northern Xinjiang Museum, along with the precious collections, has been preserved relatively intact.
Therefore, the Northern Xinjiang Museum is also like a magnet to attract visitors. In the 70s of the 20th century, Yang Zhongjian, Jia Lanpo, Pei Wenzhong and other academic celebrities came to the Northern Xinjiang Museum to check the specimens; After the reform and opening up, Professor Tobin of the University of Mainz, Germany, Schmidt Kittler, a German paleontologist, and Furston, a Finnish paleontologist, came here to investigate and study the specimens; In the 21st century, exchanges at home and abroad have become more and more frequent, and paleontologists and natural science scholars from France, the United States and other places often visit the museum......
The French sinologist Gao Dawei once praised during his visit: "The Northern Xinjiang Museum is a treasure house of great material and spiritual wealth, showing the convergence and integration of Eastern and Western science and culture. ”
Exterior view of the Northern Xinjiang Museum (photo by Li Ran)
Learn from each other and build bridges for cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries
“Bravo！ (Great!) "During the 8th Sino-French Young Leaders Forum recently, more than 60 Chinese and foreign representatives came to visit the Northern Xinjiang Museum. This French word is the most praised collection heard by Kang Yuxin, a docent of the Northern Xinjiang Museum, during the more than an hour of explanation.
This year marks the 110th anniversary of the establishment of the Northern Xinjiang Museum, and the museum has prepared a series of activities to help strengthen international cultural exchanges and mutual learning.
As early as 10 years ago, the "living fossil" of this Chinese museum was "lived" again. At that time, it was the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and France, and the 100th anniversary of Sang Zhihua's scientific investigation in China.
"In line with the principle of 'repairing the old as the old', the building is restored in accordance with the original architectural form, and the exhibitions in the museum are also restored according to the old photos, and many display cabinets are the original of the old times." Wang Jingzhang, who was in charge of the renovation of the Northern Xinjiang Museum, still remembers the first time he entered the museum.
"All paleontological specimens are reinforced and maintained by special technical means, and at the same time, considering the safety and exhibition effect of the specimens, we have used modern technical means and installed constant temperature and humidity equipment." Wang Jingzhang said.
On January 22, 2016, the Northern Xinjiang Museum was officially opened to the public; In October 2018, the south building was reopened after renovations. This museum, which once dominated the history of modern Chinese museums and has stood for a hundred years, has ushered in its glorious era.
Relying on digital technology, the collection of the Northern Xinjiang Museum is reaching more people in a more modern way. In the library collection room of the Northern Xinjiang Museum, a number of precious books, hand-drawn maps, specimen research cards, and cultural relics with great historical value and academic research value are displayed in it. "We use digital technology to digitize the collections piece by piece and page by page, build a literature service platform and book management system, and establish a database and document service platform for everyone to search and read." Lu Xuan said.
Today, the Northern Xinjiang Museum receives about 200 visitors a day, and the peak flow of people can reach about 1,000 people a day. "Shocking" and "worthwhile" are the common feelings of many visitors.
In addition, a wealth of academic exchange activities have also added to the centennial museum.
At present, an international academic conference is being held in the Northern Xinjiang Museum, and experts and scholars from many countries around the world will carry out scientific and cultural exchange activities here. In the midsummer of June this year, a group of scientific research experts here will go to the French National Museum of Natural History to carry forward Sang Zhihua's spirit of scientific exploration in academic exchanges.
Originally published in Reference News, 10th edition, May 16, 2024