Sonia placed the pictures one by one on the easel and browsed them carefully with great interest, making sounds of surprise or joy from time to time.
Although Hualien is located on the main island of Taiwan, it is surrounded by mountains on three sides. Only the area facing the East China Sea can be entered by boat. Not to mention Europeans, even among the indigenous people of Taiwan, very few people have set foot here.
This is the place with the most abundant heat and rain in Taiwan, and is rich in animal and plant resources. It is conceivable that the inspection will definitely return with a full load.
Most of these museum paintings are of plants and animals whose specimens were collected in Hualien, as well as topography, landforms, and vegetation.
Sonia looked at the pictures and the corresponding instruction manual. There weren't many new things in the plants, most of which were specimens she had already collected during several other expeditions; but there were a lot of new gains in the collection of animal specimens.
She flipped through it and found dozens of animal pictures: sika deer, Taiwanese macaque, mountain qiang, long-maned goat, Taiwanese black bear, sambar; birds such as grey-faced vulture, sparrow hawk, black-faced spoonbill, Emperor pheasant, blue-bellied pheasant, Taiwan blue magpie, five-color bird, as well as dawn swallowtail butterfly, cherry blossom salmon, green sea turtle, Taipei tree frog, mountain pepper fish, etc.
Among them, the long-maned goat, Taiwan black bear and some birds are the first specimens collected by the expedition team. In the past, Sonia had only seen simple morphological diagrams of these animals from the "Fauna of Taiwan" compiled by the National Library.
"Great, the Formosan black bear really does exist." Sonia admired the Formosan black bear written by Valentina and murmured to herself, asking, "Is the bear skin well preserved?"
"Tanned."
"What, tanned?" Sonia was shocked. Taxidermy essentially involves using stuffing to prop up an animal's skin and restore it to its original form. The peeled animal hides cannot be tanned, and are mostly preserved in the raw hide state with toxic antiseptic drugs such as arsenic ointment.
"Teacher Cui said it doesn't matter. He used a special method. It will not affect the subsequent production."
Since it was the elder who said it was no problem, Sonia was relieved - the Australians had given her too many surprises, not just this one.
Sonia asked questions while watching, and also asked many inspection questions. Valentina had to remind her that she had not been to Hualien and that these were based on "glass paintings".
The so-called "glass paintings" are actually digital photos. Printing photos is too technically difficult for the Senate, and there is nowhere to replenish the equipment and consumables. Therefore, the data taken with digital imaging equipment in this time and space are stored in digital form in various magnetic media storages, and they are also displayed when displayed. Multi-use tablets, high-definition TVs and other playback devices. Since most of these devices have LCD screens, they are naturally called "glass pictures" by the naturalized people who come into contact with them.
Unlike relatively popular movies, very few naturalized citizens have access to "glass pictures" and are limited to a small number of professional and technical personnel. Sonia and Valentina, who work at the Museum of Natural History, naturally see it well.
The "glass picture" has a very high degree of image and color reproduction, and it can also record dynamic images. It is very convenient to record animals and plants, so Sonia didn't understand why the senator was so interested in "natural history painting" at first. Until Lin Hanlong once personally admitted that the Senate had no way to turn the contents of the "glass picture" into another medium.
"But those pictorials..." Sonia thought of the "pictorials" that Lin Hanlong quietly took home and made her blush when she saw them.
"Yes, yes, actually we have this technology, but we don't have the materials." Lin Hanlong roughly explained the raw materials needed to print photos.
"...Right now, we only have the ability to print simple black-and-white photos, which not only have no color, but also have very limited resolution."
Sonia did not ask further why they had this ability in "Australia" but not in China. She has learned her lesson and won't get to the bottom of it again.
“So when can we rebuild this technology?”
"This requires the efforts of many people and involves many disciplines. It will take about several years." Lin Hanlong said, "In fact, even with such technology, scientific painting is still very useful. Sometimes paintings can express things better than photos Come up with details.”
"It would be better if I could go there in person." Sonia said with emotion, "What a pity. Look, how beautiful the scenery is!"
What she saw was a colorful museum painting of landforms and scenery - although it was a scientific painting, it actually looked the same as a landscape painting.
"It's beautiful, but there are a lot of barbarians there. The expedition team was attacked," the Italian girl said, "I heard they specialize in cutting off people's heads!"
Of course Sonia knew about the fact that Taiwan's aboriginal people had their heads cut off from grass. When she went to Tainan for inspection, she visited an indigenous village full of human heads, and she even got a head cut out of grass through a local Han vendor - Has been drying for many years. The head is currently in a wooden box at the Natural History Museum.
"With the protection of armed guards, what is there to be afraid of?" Sonia flipped through the landscapes. These landform paintings reflect the scenery on the Hualien-Taitung Longitudinal Valley Plain, and it was autumn during the inspection. Under the attack of the cold current, the green mountains and green valleys on both sides of the valley turned red with red leaves, reflecting the morning sun, like fire, and extremely dazzling.
She quickly discerned that there were a large number of deciduous broad-leaved forest belts distributed on the 500-meter-high mountain vegetation map. Among them, maple and liquidambar are the most important trees with red leaves. In addition, there are also trees such as Taiwan beech, Taiwan lattice, Pistacia chinensis, and Sichuan wood. When the weather gets cold at the end of autumn and winter, the leaves of these trees turn into different shades of red, such as translucent red, dark red, and orange-red.
"It's so beautiful! You can draw it well too!" Sonia said sincerely, "I can't draw it."
"It's nothing," Valentina pretended not to care, but she was very happy in her heart. "The scenery is indeed beautiful, but it is a barbaric place! It would be great if there were no savages and malaria."
"Neither barbarians nor malaria are opponents of the Senate." Sonia said, and was attracted by the next group of paintings. This group is the scenery at the foothills. The view also includes an Aboriginal village. She read the description: The eastern foot of Beinanzhu Mountain in the Central Mountain Range of Taiwan Island. Alluvial fan of Red Leaf Creek. The fan surface of the alluvial fan has been cut due to the relationship between flowing water and terrain movement, forming uneven river terraces, similar to the valley landform. The surrounding mountains and ridges are covered with green maples and bamboos, and the green water surrounds the green mountains. The scenery is pleasant.
After reading all the pictures, Sonia put the heavy picture album on the information shelf - next she will write relevant natural history descriptions for the album. But there is no rush for this work, you have to wait in a row.
"Have all the collected animals been delivered?"
"Everything has arrived - it stinks!" She pinched her nose, "It smells like rotting meat. I doubt you can use it as a specimen."
"Is it all rotten?"
"Those skins are fine, but I don't see much of the whole animal. It stinks!"
"Where is everything now?"
"In the basement, kept on ice."
"Let's talk about it tomorrow." Sonia looked at her schedule, "Tomorrow I will take the apprentice to see the situation."
"It's up to you. I don't want to go anyway... I'll paint after you finish the specimens." Valentina has little interest in natural history. She paints and works only because of the master's orders - she doesn't care about being at home. Be a "full-time maid". After all, there are so many wonderful things to enjoy in Lingao. It was countless times better than the hut she lived in in Italy.
"Okay, I'll call you when I need you." Sonia said helplessly. In fact, she really hoped that the Italian girl could stay with her. Firstly, she could talk, and secondly, it would be better to do some drawing work on the spot.
"Then I'll leave first. There are still a lot of paintings to be done." Valentina stretched, "It would be great if I could have a small house in such a beautiful place - of course, this is something Australians can't do." Conquered the place.”
After saying that, she remembered something and took out a leather notebook from her bag.
"This is what Chief Cui asked me to give to you. It is the Hualien inspection notes. He said you will definitely be interested."
"Great!" Sonia became excited and took it immediately, "Please tell him: Thank you very much for his hospitality!"
After sending Valentina away, Sonia took out an "English-Chinese Dictionary" compiled by the Great Library from the drawer and eagerly opened the notebook. She already has a certain level of Chinese reading ability and can understand relatively simple articles. But when reading long articles, you still need to use a dictionary to understand the complete meaning.
"...The Taitung Rift Valley Plain is located in the eastern part of Taiwan Island, between the Central Mountains and the Coast Mountains. It starts from Hualien in the north and reaches Taitung in the south, so it is also called the Huadong Rift Valley Plain. It is 180 kilometers long from north to south and 2 to 7 kilometers wide from east to west. km, with an area of about 1,000 square kilometers and an altitude of 50-250 meters. Among them, the north and south ends of the longitudinal valley each have the Hualien Plain and the Taitung Delta Plain with an area of about 80 square kilometers. There is an important port on the east coast - Hualien Port. , located on the east side of the Hualien Plain, with 121.17 degrees east longitude and 23.08 degrees north latitude, is an important transportation channel for the entire Taitung Rift Valley and the only transportation channel for communicating with the outside world.
"The Taitung Longitudinal Valley is a fault valley with steep mountains on both sides and a narrow, strip-shaped plain. It is also called a "flood plain" due to the influence of sediment discharged from the mountains on both sides. Its geological origin is in the center of Taiwan The mountains and the Eurasian Continental Plate to the west and the Coastal Mountains and the Pacific Plate to the east were formed when they collided 10 million years ago. Afterwards, they were continuously washed and silted by rivers on both sides of the longitudinal valley, forming today's mountains. Longitudinal Valley Plain. Although the plain area is less than 1,000 square kilometers, it is rare in the eastern region of this mountain cluster. It falls like a jade belt between the Central Mountains and the Coastal Mountains, making it the most fertile area in eastern Taiwan."
