The Great Feathered Dinosaur Expedition

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来源：洪恩论坛 Canuck's Comments  日期：2007-1-30  作者：tdeanxx

阅读：1692 次

Hi Hongen friends! Well, after catching up on a lot of work and the busy holiday season, I am back to writing my China adventure memoirs. And this installment
is most special to me. Since I am a geologist and I have loved dinosaurs since
I was a little boy, I was most excited about being so close to the world famous
feathered dinosaurs and birds so perfectly preserved in the special rocks of China's Liaoning province. These incredible fossils preserved super fine details
of the ancient animals, even feathers and skin and over the last ten years or so
they have truly revolutionized the world’s understanding of how birds branched
off of the dinosaur family tree. I had hoped to travel to the area north of Dalian with James and maybe check out the museum being built near the isolated fossil site. When I found out how isolated and off the beaten path this place was
, I decided to forget that trip and just head to Beijing directly from Dalian.
But my dear, sweet one woman travel bureau, Dove, would have none of that. Instead, she arranged a dinosaur safari par excellance.

After our superb tour of Dalian James and I got up early and left the lovely and
luxurious Dalian Shangri La hotel in the company of the lovely and learned Dove
and her incredibly talented assistant Karen. We were delivered through the treacherous traffic by the heroic Ms. Dove (I consider anyone with the courage to drive in the chaotic Dalian traffic to be heroes) to the bus station and headed to Jinzhou, north of Dalian. I actually enjoyed the bus ride. They had a Hong Kong movie on tape and the countryside was quite interesting to me. There was quite a lot of mountainous country, which I always find interesting because of the
geology that can be seen in the road cuts as we travel. I was very amazed at the very high quality of the highways we traveled on. The road surfaces were smoother than most US interstate highways and the bridges and ramps seemed to be well designed and built. But what James and I really marveled at was the finely manicured plants, flowers and shrubs along the highways for mile after mile. In
the US the cost of labor for such maintenance intensive decorative projects make them impossible, except inside cities. To see these lovely highways for mile
after mile tells a visitor something about Chinese values and it is a very favorable impression. Such beautiful highway projects don’t just make for a pleasant journey, it provides important jobs in the countryside, reducing unemployment
and reducing the need for country people to crowd into the cities around China
.

On the bus to Jinzhou I was also very impressed by the very intensive agriculture with the very common use of well designed greenhouses for crops and high value
products. These greenhouses have an earthen north wall that absorbs and stores
the sun’s warmth so that the greenhouse cools off much more slowly at night, reducing or eliminating the need for natural gas heating as is common in the US.
The greenhouses greatly extend the growing season in the cool north of China and increase the income of the farmers in this area. Greenhouses are relatively rare in the US because they tend to be labor intensive. They are only used for very high value crops such as flowers and special medicinal herbs. It is clear that the long history of intensive agriculture in China is continuing and progressing. It is also worth noting that as global climate change increases and the earth’s climate begins to swing wildly from hot to cold, drought to flood, that
these greenhouse farmers will be able to control the interior climate of their greenhouses and remain productive. I think it is likely that Chinese farmers will be teaching the farmers in Africa and other developing countries their techniques and help to save the lives of millions in danger of starvation caused by the
potentially very dangerous effects of climate change on agriculture.

Jinzhou is clearly not a tourist Mecca (hot spot) since our arrival was accompanied by an absurd amount of attention at the bus station compared to Dalian. But
Karen very quickly had a taxi for us and we were headed to our very comfortable
hotel, the best in town, that had been booked by Dove. James and I had a nap,
since we were still recovering from our whirlwind tour of Dalian and continuing
jet lag. After our nap, we had a wonderful dinner at a popular and classy restaurant, featuring ample servings of the local cuisine. The three of us had a wonderfully pleasant time, receiving the smiling greetings of several of the locals
and wishes for a pleasant trip in China. As everywhere in China we were warmly
treated as special guests by total strangers. It is hard not to have a warm feeling of affection that grows with every day in this special nation.

After a restful night’s sleep, we arose to a great breakfast at the hotel and a
full day of exploration of Jinzhou, especially it’s wonderful museum of natural history, with hundreds of examples of the extraordinary feathered dinosaurs and early birds. The only fossil that I had seen that was comparable was a cast
of the famous early bird Archeopterics. This is a bird fossil found in Germany,
but the fossils are so rare that they provided scientists with little information as to how birds evolved and from which earlier animals. But the large variety of exquisitely preserved Chinese fossils discovered in the last ten years or so has completely resolved the questions about where birds came from. And the answer is? Every bird you see flying around today is really a flying dinosaur. And what’s more, we have learned from the Chinese dinosaur – bird fossils that
the first birds evolved from feathered dinosaurs that lived in trees and used both their feathered arms and legs to glide from tree to tree to escape predators
and to get quickly to more food supplies. China was just the luckiest place in
the world because at that time nearby volcanoes would erupt every few hundred years or so and trap the birds and other fossil animals in lakes and preserve them
with very fine ash immediately after death. These ash falls continued for millions of years, providing geologists with an excellent picture of evolving birds
, dinosaurs and other creatures and plants they shared their ecosystems with. I
consider myself very lucky to have seen these wonderful fossil specimens and I
will forever be thankful to my dear friend with the sweet smile – Dove.

After our fascinating tour of the Jinzhou museum, we stopped by to visit the adjacent Revolutionary Martyrs Memorial Park which honors the dead in a key battle of the revolution. I thought it was quite remarkable in it’s similarity to the U.S. Vietnam Memorial. As in the Washington memorial, the names of the dead
are inscribed on black granite tablets that provide a very personal realization
of the costs of war. Each of the thousands of names is a real person with a family that wishes he were still with them. Walking past each stone with hundreds
of names makes you realize the true cost of war. The nation honors their sacrifice, but we wish it weren’t necessary. James and I talked about Taiwan and Hong Kong and the patience that China has shown to avoid war over these issues. The dead on the black granite walls died in 1948. Perhaps 30,000 to 50,000 Chinese from both sides died in this one battle. China remembers the hard lessons of
war. In the US our black granite walls for Viet Nam have 53,000 names on it, yet still we produce more dead for more black walls. A protest song from Viet Nam
asked “When will they ever learn?” That’s what I’d like to know.

The next day we spent the final day in Jinzhou going to another small museum filled with hundreds of wonderful, perfectly preserved fossils in Yizhou, just north of Jinzhou. The museum was perhaps 50 km. from town and Dove provided me with
with a car, driver and guide, who, as it turns out were both local judges. This leads me to believe that Dove must control all of Liaoning. Her incredible influence is everywhere. If she isn’t the boss of Liaoning she should be. Anyhow, we returned to Jinzhou by about noon and were treated to a wonderful lunch by
the judges. We had a wonderful conversation about Chinese law, translated by the lovely Karen as we drank some Chinese wine. I made sure that the judges weren’t going back to work that day. I’d hate for them to make a bad decision “under the influence”. Then we were off to the bus station for a ride to the “Forbidden City”. After the lovely and laid back Liaoning, we were off to Beijing and it was a little scarey. To be continued…

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