Zheng Zuoxin

Bust of Zheng Zuoxin in the Beijing Natural History Museum

Zheng Zuoxin ( Chinese 郑作新* 18th November 1906 in Fuzhou , Province Fujian , † 27. June 1998 in Beijing ), also known as Cheng Tso-hsin transcribed, was a Chinese ornithologist , who for his significant work on the birds of China is known .

Life

Zheng became interested in the local avifauna as a child . His mother died of tuberculosis when he was four and he was mostly cared for by his grandmother. His father had a higher education and had perfect command of the English language, from which Zheng also benefited. As a young boy, he was weak and his father encouraged him to play sports. Zheng hiked in the mountains, played tennis and became national champion in the 100 m run. He attended high school in Fuzhou , was admitted to Fujian Christian University at the age of 15, and in 1926 did his bachelor's degree after seven semesters-Graduation. Then he wanted to continue studying in the United States, but he lacked the funding. Thanks to an uncle who worked as a doctor in Fuzhou, the travel expenses could be raised and Zheng chose the University of Michigan because a cousin of his lived there and the tuition fees were low. He passed the entrance exam and majored in zoology. In 1930 he received his doctorate with the dissertation The Germ Cell history of Rana cantabrigensis Baird under the direction of Peter Olaus Okkelberg (1880-1960).

In September 1930, Zheng returned to China, where he became professor of biology at Fujian Christian University. In 1938 Japanese troops marched into Fujian and the university had to relocate to Shaowu . In April 1945, Zheng flew to the United States as a visiting professor as part of a scholarly exchange, where he began work on his overall overview of the Chinese bird fauna. To do this, he examined the bird collections from China in more than ten American universities and museums, in particular the type specimens, and he studied the writings relevant to China and not accessible in his home country. In September 1946 he went back to Fujian Christian University, which had since returned to Fuzhou.

In 1947 he was forced to move to Nanjing because of the civil war between Maoists and the Kuomintang . In 1948, many university employees fled to Taiwan, and Zheng considered doing so, but changed his mind when he learned that the Communist Party was looking for scientists. He joined the Communist Party, moved to Beijing in 1950 and became a bird curator at the Chinese Academy of Sciences . In 1951 he founded the Beijing Natural History Museum . Zheng was the first director of the Bureau for Scientific Publications, where he read Joachim Steinbacher's book Bird Migration and Bird Researchtranslated into Chinese. From 1955 to 1957 he accompanied Soviet and East German ornithologists on expeditions and studies in southern Yunnan and northeastern China.

In 1958, Zheng's work in China was interrupted by a campaign to eradicate the four plagues (sparrows, mice, flies and mosquitoes). Zheng was against this campaign from the start for ecological reasons, but it was not until 1959 that his reports were successful: the sparrows were excluded from the control program and replaced by bedbugs. In May 1957 he traveled to East Germany and, together with Erwin Stresemann, examined bellows from the Chinese region in the Zoological Museum of the Humboldt University in Berlin . He took part in meetings with other ornithologists such as Leonid Alexandrowitsch Portenko , Charles Vaurie and Günther Niethammer , whom Stresemann consideredAtlases-Pacific Conference designated. Due to instructions from the Chinese embassy in East Germany, however, he was not allowed to attend evening events in Stresemann's house in West Berlin. Zheng was appointed foreign correspondent of the German Ornithological Society through Stresemann's nomination . After stays in Leningrad and Moscow, he returned to China, where he was confronted with Mao's Cultural Revolution in 1966 .

Zheng was classified as a criminal for resisting fighting the sparrows. His scientific work at the Zoological Institute was suspended, his bird collection and library were closed and any publication activity was prohibited. He and several other scientists had signs that read Reactionary Authoritywear. He was assigned to do physical labor re-education, which included cleaning the toilets, and had to sit a technical examination conducted by a committee. He was asked to identify a bird that was made up of parts from several species. After failing the "test", his salary was cut to an absolute minimum. He was then arrested and isolated in a cowshed for six months. As early as August 1966, his house was searched by Red Guards and all his belongings were confiscated, including furniture, the piano, his suits and his typewriter, which he valued most. In 1967 Red Guards occupied the Zoological Institute and transformed it into a commune with the nameRevolutionary rebel group around. In 1968 the Red Guards were pacified by Mao, but it wasn't until the beginning of the 1970s that normality returned to normal in the Zoological Institute.

Zheng began looking for the manuscript for the second edition of his main work, Directory and Distribution of the Birds of China , which he had given to the publisher shortly before the Cultural Revolution, but which he returned to the Zoological Institute. After a long search, he found it in a dusty storage room. Zheng sent the manuscript to the publisher for publication. It was printed in 1978, but the publication was postponed to 1976 and provided with a long quote from Chairman Mao Tsetung's words .

After Mao's death, Zheng was invited to an international symposium of the World Pheasant Association in November 1978. He also spent two months in England where he met Sir Peter Scott and Geoffrey Matthews . His visit was very successful and helped rebuild the bridge between Chinese and foreign scholars after the Cultural Revolution. Zheng made many more overseas visits in the following years.

Zheng's bibliography includes 140 scientific articles, 20 monographs, 30 books, and 260 popular science essays. For example, he was the lead author of A Synopsis of the Avifauna of China (1987) and of six of the 14 volumes of Fauna Sinica, Aves , for which he received the National Wildlife Federation's Special Conservation Achievement Award in Beijing in May 1989 . From 1950 to 1966 he went on excursions to remote areas such as the southern part of Yunnan, Hainan Island , Tibet and the central part of the Qin Ling Mountainsand carried out ornithological studies, which culminated in the description of 16 new subspecies, 13 of which are still valid today. In 1955 he published the two-volume List of Chinese Birds and in 1963 China's Economic Fauna: Birds . All three volumes have been translated from Chinese and published in English by the United States Department of the Interior. From 1970 to 1980 he focused on the volumes of Fauna Sinica, Aves . From 1980 to 1985 he introduced his students and colleagues to studies on the ecological biology of threatened species, for which he received the Second-class Award from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The Sichuan swirl is a songbird species named after Zheng Zuoxin

Dedication names

The Cheng racing rat ( Meriones chengi ) and the Sichuan swirl ( Locustella chengi ) are named after Zheng .

List of taxa described by Zheng

• Dendrocopos leucotos tangi Cheng, 1956
• Garrulax merulinus taweishanicus Cheng, 1960, now a synonym of Garrulax merulinus obscurus Delacour & Jabouille, 1930
• Passer rutilans batangensis Cheng & Tan, 1963, now a synonym for Passer cinnamomeus intensior Rothschild, 1922
• Garrulax pectoralis pingi Cheng, 1963
• Pteruthius flaviscapis lingshuiensis Cheng, 1963
• Ficedula sapphira tienchuanensis Cheng, 1964
• Sitta frontalis chienfengensis Cheng, Ting, & Wang, 1964, today Sitta solangiae chienfengensis
• Lophura nycthemera omeiensis Cheng, Chang & Tang, 1964
• Treron Sieboldii fopingensis Cheng, Tan & Sung, 1973
• Paradoxornis paradoxus taipaiensis (Cheng, Lo & Chao, 1973), today Cholornis paradoxus taipaiensis
• Pomatorhinus ruficollis hunanensis Cheng, 1974
• Dendrocopos major wulashanicus Cheng, Xian, Zhang & Jiang, 1975
• Tragopan caboti guangxiensis Cheng & Wu, 1979
• Garrulax galbanus simaoensis Cheng & Tang, 1982
• Paradoxornis zappeyi erlangshanicus (Cheng, Li & Zhang, 1983), today Sinosuthora zappeyi erlangshanica
• Paradoxornis flavirostris gongshanensis Cheng, 1984, now a synonym of Paradoxornis guttaticollis David, 1871

literature

• Fumin Lei, Gang Song: Tso-Hsin Cheng: The founder of modern ornithology and zoogeography in China. Protein Cell (2020). DOI: 10.1007 / s13238-020-00761-3

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Eugeniusz Nowak: Memories of ornithologists I knew (4th part) Archived from the original on February 22, 2019. In: Der Ornithologische Beobachter . 99, 2002, pp. 49-70.
2. ↑ Obituary . In: Ibis . 141, 2008, p. 167. doi : 10.1111 / j.1474-919X.1999.tb04279.x .
3. ↑ Hsu, Weishu: In memoriam: Tso-Hsin Cheng, 1906-1998 . In: The Auk . 116, No. 2, 1999, pp. 539-541.
4. ↑ Cheng, 1956
5. ↑ Cheng, 1960
6. ↑ Cheng & Tan, 1963
7. ↑ Cheng, 1963
8. ↑ Cheng, 1963
9. ↑ Cheng 1964
10. ↑ Cheng, Ting, & Wang, 1964
11. ↑ Cheng, Chang & Tang, 1964
12. ↑ Cheng, Tan & Sung, 1973
13. ↑ Cheng, Lo & Chao, 1973
14. ↑ Cheng, 1974
15. ↑ Cheng, Xian, Zhang & Jiang, 1975
16. ↑ Cheng & Wu, 1979
17. ↑ Cheng & Tang, 1982
18. ↑ Cheng, Li & Zhang, 1983
19. ↑ Cheng, 1984

Web links

• Literature by and about Zheng Zuoxin in the WorldCat bibliographic database