In the 16 years of his aid to Tibet, he traveled more than 500,000 kilometers, collected more than 40 million seeds from more than 1,000 species of plants, and climbed to an altitude of more than 6,000 meters several times, leaving Chinese botanists sampling at the highest point. .
He is Zhong Yang, a famous botanist in my country.
Last night, the latest issue of "China in Stories" took us back to the "Seed Life" of Zhong Yang, a botanist, and paid tribute to the Chinese scientists who took root in the motherland in the new era!
The ambition of young talents
Cultivate more talents for the country
In the 1980s, Zhong Yang came to work at the Wuhan Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences as a computer talent.
Under the guidance of my colleague Zhang Xiaoyan, I started to get in touch with botany-related majors for the first time.
Later, Zhong Yang and Zhang Xiaoyan got married.
Talented and intelligent, young and promising, Zhong Yang, in his early thirties, became the deputy director of the Institute of Botany.
In 2000, Zhong Yang gave up his position as deputy director of the Wuhan Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and was invited to join Fudan University, determined to cultivate more talents in botany and ecology.
"I really want to cultivate more talents in ecology in the future. In every student's heart, a seed of love for plants and ecology is planted." Zhong Yang said.
Leading students all over Tibet
Build a "Seed Ark"
The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has the most abundant alpine plant resources in the world, but in the world's largest seed resource bank, there is no information on plants in Tibet.
Zhong Yang believes that this gap must be filled.
In 2001, Zhong Yang went to Tibet for the first time. Since then, he will go to Tibet every year to conduct field scientific research work and insist on collecting seeds on the plateau.
The giant cypress is one of the endemic tree species in Tibet, with a narrow distribution and a sparse number. It is a national key protected plant.
In order to protect the giant cypresses, Zhong Yang led the students to walk on both sides of the Yarlung Zangbo River and other places. After three years, he sampled and registered the only 30,000 Tibetan giant cypress trees in the world one by one.
The plateau cedar he collected has already extracted anti-cancer ingredients.
"Snow Rabbit" is a unique plant in Tibet, and it is the highest-altitude plant recorded in the world, with extremely high scientific research value.
However, entering the Tibetan area at an altitude of 6,000 meters is a great challenge for the body of ordinary people.
However, with his insistence, Zhong Yang finally collected the Rabbit and Snow Rabbit at an altitude of 6,100 meters, which also pushed the highest altitude of Chinese botanical collection to a new height.
Collecting seeds on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is unimaginably difficult. Due to the barriers of mountains, it is often necessary to travel 800 kilometers a day.
On the way, mudslides, landslides, and car rollovers are all commonplace. They often endure altitude sickness, motion sickness, and bumps at the same time. It is difficult for ordinary people to persevere, and Zhong Yang has persevered for 16 years.
In order to make the world pay attention to the seeds of Tibet, Zhong Yang led the students to "take stock of the family" and went to Tibet to collect seeds. In 16 years, he collected more than 40 million seeds of more than 1,000 kinds of plants!
Over the past 16 years, Zhong Yang has devoted all his efforts to the cultivation of Tibetan talents.
He helped Tibet University to create "firsts" one after another: he applied for the first doctor of science program in Tibet, trained the first doctor of botany for Tibetans, and brought out the first innovation team of the Ministry of Biology Education in Tibet. He led the ecology discipline of Tibet University and was selected into the national "double first-class" discipline construction list, which laid a solid foundation for the future development of Tibetan ecology.
race for life
167 flights a year
For the "seed cause", he travels back and forth between Shanghai and Tibet all the year round.
Switching back and forth between high and low altitudes is very harmful to the body.
In 2015, Zhong Yang suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, and the doctor suggested that he should never go to Tibet again. However, he felt that time was limited, so he accelerated the pace of work. In 2016 alone, he flew 167 times!
However, on September 25, 2017, Zhong Yang suffered a car accident at work, and his life was forever fixed at the age of 53.
"I hope to be a serious and lively scientific worker and to climb on the road of science." Zhong Yang wrote this sentence in his diary when he was 16 years old, and it is firmly fixed in his life trajectory. .
Even his twin sons, Zhong Yang, named after plants: spruce and yunshi.
"A gymnosperm, an angiosperm, can include all the plant kingdoms, and it also shows that we love plants as much as we love our children," explained Zhong Yang's wife.
"It is not the outstanding who dream, but the good dreamers who are outstanding."
Zhong Yang has lived himself as a "seed" for chasing his dreams. Now that the seed has returned to the earth, countless young people have taken over the baton in his hands and used another way to make the new students bloom.