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Xishuangbanna garden: Daunting path to paradise
By Yang Cheng and Li Yingqing (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-09 07:43
Today Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) is one of the world's renowned tropical gardens, but 50 years ago when it was founded in southwestern China's Yunnan province its pioneers faced deadly and daunting challenges from both nature and man. Dr Chen Jin, director of the stunning 900-hectare nature preserve, recalled the sacrifice made by a group of hardy scientist and students. "Fifty years ago, famous and respected Chinese botanist and professor Cai Xitao headed up a group of hot-blooded youngsters into this peninsula-shaped area covered by dense tropical forest," he said. "They had to cross the Luosuo River by canoe." Eight-person group In May 1958, Cai led an eight-person group to Xiaojie, Damenglong, 46 km from Jinghong, capital of the Xishuangbanna Dai autonomous prefecture, and began pioneering work to create the XTBG.
According to Chen, Xiaojie near China's border with Myanmar and Laos was vulnerable to remnants of the Kuomintang army that had taken refuge in neighboring countries. After in-depth surveys of the land, Cai submitted a report asking to move the site to an area nestled inside sharp bends in the Luosuo River. It was approved and became home to today's facility in Menglun township of Mengla county. "It was an inhospitable piece of land with a Dai ethnic village of only six households on the riverside - which was also known as a leper's area for taking in a woman suffering from the disease of leprosy," Chen said. It was also home to leaches, swarms of noxious insects and potentially dangerous animals. The pioneers of the garden set some bold targets - to comprehensively research plant ecology and cultivation, then develop tropical plant science and a botanical garden. "They worked six and a half days each week, six days building the garden and a half day growing grain," he said. "The rainy seasons and incredibly hot sun in dry seasons were unbearable," Chen said. "Torrential rains and storms often devastated the grass cottages. Floods from the Luosuo River sometimes washed away houses." The first group of pioneers not only contributed their youth and sweat but even their lives. Deng Jian, Bao Jilong, Li Wenxin and Zhou San all died while helping start the garden.
By 1963, houses, laboratories and offices had been built along with a nursery for specimens. More than 1,000 species from home and abroad were planted and cultivated. The garden made advances in the introduction and domestication of oil-bearing fruit, propagation of the medicinal plant Rauwolfia useful in treating high blood pressure and cultivation of high-yielding banana and cassava. Prestigious researchers Yu Dejun, Chen Fenghuai and Sheng Chenggui all lauded the efforts at the first conference on botanical gardens of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). In 1965, administrators vowed to build the operation into a world-class botanical garden, but some 30 experts including Cai were persecuted between 1965 and 1971 during early years of the cultural revolution and development of the garden was crippled, Chen said. |
