This exhilarating book interweaves the stories of two early twentieth-century botanists to explore the collaborative relationships each formed with Yunnan villagers in gathering botanical specimens from the borderlands between China, Tibet, and Burma. Erik Mueggler introduces Scottish botanist George Forrest, who employed Naxi adventurers in his fieldwork from 1906 until his death in 1932. We also meet American Joseph Francis Charles Rock, who, in 1924, undertook a dangerous expedition to Gansu and Tibet with the sons and nephews of Forrest's workers. Mueggler describes how the Naxi workers and their Western employers rendered the earth into specimens, notes, maps, diaries, letters, books, photographs, and ritual manuscripts. Drawing on an ancient metaphor of the earth as a book, Mueggler provides a sustained meditation on what can be copied, translated, and revised and what can be folded back into the earth.
The Paper Road
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"First things first: this is an outstanding book... Mueggler weaves together ... a lyrically-written story."--New Bks In East Asian Stds "This work provides the reader with a remarkable look into another place and culture in a time gone by."--Chicago Botanic Garden "A richly textured history... The book will provide lively, informative reading for ambitious readers and specialists... Highly recommended."--Choice
About the Author
Erik Mueggler is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Age of Wild Ghosts: Memory, Violence, and Place in Southwest China (UC Press).
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The Wildest Dreams of Kew were Defined by the Naxi in Yunnan
2 April 2012
By Keith D. Leslie
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Erik Mueggler is author of 'The Age of Wild Ghosts', a study of the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward (Backward?) on the Yi people of Yunnan. In 'The Paper Road', Mueggler continues his brilliant exploration of the impact of modern history on traditional lives in southwest China. Whereas the earlier anthropological study explored the rapid destruction of village mores, ritual and lives by communist political ideologies of the Chinese revolution, his latest work steps back to the early decades of the 20th Century when Western science sought to extend its knowledge of the botanical riches of Yunnan, Sichuan and the Burmese border areas. In this fascinating and readable account of two of those early explorers (Forrest and Rock), Mueggler contrasts the material worldviews of these Western collectors with the mythic 'mapping' by their local counterparts, the Naxi men who climbed the remote ridges and ancient forests to collect the samples that ended up in Kew, Edinburgh and Harvard. Using the metaphor of the 'road', we tramp with these independent and courageous botanists in these once isolated lands and come to appreciate the wealth of meaning present in the local cultures. Through Mueggler's enchanted writing, the reader ventures further into the complex relations between our Western civilization and the indigenous people whose lives were altered by the extension of the imperial reach into their remote valleys and villages. The remarkable species of plants sent back by these early explorers have already altered the face of European and American gardens, but with this detailed and gently sympathetic study, our minds will better understand now the riches of culture that defined these border communities, as well as the lack of understanding that haunted these social relationships along the Burmese border and Tibetan plateau over a century ago.
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