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A Journey Through Western Sichuan: The Naturalist Walking in Nature

  • Time
    7 June 2025, 13.30–15.00
  • Location
    4F, A4 Art Museum
  • Guest Speakers
    WANG Zhao

Introduction

Situated in Southwest China, Sichuan’s unique geographical position and ecological environment have fostered unparalleled biodiversity. For millennia, numerous naturalists captivated by the natural world have journeyed here to observe and document the region’s abundant resources.
From the exotic flora and fauna of Chengdu recorded by the Northern Song official Song Qi, to the Western ‘plant hunter’ Ernest Henry Wilson, who famously lauded the region as the ‘Mother of Gardens’, to the modern Chinese botanical pioneer Fang Wenpei and his extensive plant surveys of Mount Emei—these first-hand accounts and authentic records capture the profound biological diversity of this land.
Today, we revisit these explorers’ expeditions in Western Sichuan through archival manuscripts and historical imagery. In doing so, we offer a historical response to the escalating public interest in contemporary nature conservation.

  • Guest Profile

    WANG Zhao
    Associate Researcher at the School of Arts, Sichuan University; PhD in the Philosophy of Science and Technology from Peking University; and Visiting Scholar at the Palace Museum.
    His research focuses on the history of science and technology and the history of natural history, with a current emphasis on the artistic study of natural history imagery. He has presided over research projects funded by the National Social Science Fund of China and the Ministry of Education’s Social Science Fund.
    Dr Wang has published numerous academic papers on natural history art in prestigious journals such as ‘Palace Museum Journal’, ‘Journal of Dialectics of Nature’, ‘Historical Archives’, and ‘Picture Historiography’. He has also curated several specialised exhibitions on natural history art at institutions including the Sichuan University Museum, the Museum of the History of Science at Tsinghua University, the Zhejiang Museum of Natural History, the Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences at Southern University of Science and Technology, The Commercial Press, and the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts.

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