Joseph Francis Rock (1884-1962). Travel diaries of a botanist and ethnographer from Lanzhou to Koko Nor (Qinghai) 1925 and from Chone to Songpan 1927 (Eastern Tibet / West China)
Edited from Rock's revised manuscripts by Hartmut Walravens
edited by Hartmut Walravens
Joseph Francis Rock (1884-1962), indefatigable traveler, explorer, botanist and ethnographer, was not only a very successful plant hunter but also a celebrated expert on the Naxi culture in Yunnan, Southwest China. He published the results of his studies in a number of articles, both for a larger audience, e.g. in the National Geographic Magazine with stunning color photographs, and in extensive monographs for the academic community. In addition, he documented his travels in field diaries, which were not meant for publication but to supplement his books and articles in the form of vivid travelogues. Hartmut Walravens has already published a number of Rock’s materials, a phytogeography of SW China, correspondence with other scholars and several field diaries. These travel diaries contain descriptions of two trips Rock undertook as part of his expedition to Southwest China from 1924 to 1926 on behalf of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, which he organized from Chone in Gansu Province (famous for printing of the Chone Kanjur, a corpus of the Lamaist Canon in Tibetan). Both travelogues are of great interest – the first, which led from Gansu via Xining to Qinghai (Kuku Nor, “Blue Lake”) largely through desert-like country, was successful not for the dendrologist but for the geographer and the ornithologist (Rock collected also for Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology). The second trip describes the hasty travel from Chone to Shanghai, when foreigners were advised to leave China for security reasons; the circumstances were adventurous and did not offer many opportunities for collecting. Nevertheless, the expedition was able to recover around 20,000 botanical specimens and 1,000 bird skins. With maps and index.
- Edited by Hartmut Walravens
Other Titles in this Series
The Beginning of the Subtle School of Taoism
An Official Perception of Taoism in the Early T'ang Period
Volume 94
Another Tract for the Buryats
including I. J. Schmidt's recentlly identified Kalmuck Originals
Volume 82
Bible Translations – Linguistic and Cultural Issues
Proceedings of the Erlangen Workshop on October 5 and 6, 2018
Volume 122
Daoist perspectives on knowing the future
Selections from the Scripture on Great Peace (Taiping jing)
Volume 110
Die vokalische Gestalt des arabischen Wortstamms
Ihr Kodierungspotential im dreiradikaligen Masdar
Volume 127
Fujian – Penghu – Taiwan
Fruhe Kontakte, nach Texten zusammengefasst (ca. 200-1450 n.Chr.)
Volume 95
Arabische Kunstprosa im 14. Jahrhundert
Drei Einsetzungen fur Oberrichter 'Imad ad-Din at-Tarasusi in Lehramter an Damaszener Hochschulen
Volume 123
Verbal Festivity in Arabic and Other Semitic Languages
Proceedings of the Workshop at the Universitatsclub Bonn on January 16, 2009
Volume 72
The morphological-to-analytic causative continuum in Hausa
New insights and analyses in a typological perspective
Volume 109
Ahmad ibn Yusuf at-Tifasis ‘Buch der koniglichen Steine’
Eine Mineralienkunde fur die arabischen Herrscher des 7./13. Jahrhunderts Eingeleitet, ubersetzt und mit Anmerkungen versehen von Armin Schopen und Karl W. Strauss Mit 38 Abbildungen von Alfred K. Schuster
Volume 92
The Lexical Field of the Substantives of ‘Word’ in Ancient Hebrew
From the Bible to the Mishnah
Volume 124
Hochsprache und Dialekt im Arabischen
Untersuchungen zur heutigen arabischen Zweisprachigkeit
Volume 41.1
Similar Books
Gender in Gandharan Art
Representations and Interactions in the Buddhist Context (1st-4th centuries CE)
Liberating the Repressed Self among Contemporary Chinese
A Theoretical Study Involving Tu Weiming and Jürgen Moltmann
Volume 41
Reframing Restoration
Rwanda Re-photographed 100 Years Later or the Reconstruction of Landscape Memory
The Archaeology of Irrigation Technology and Water Management in the Islamic World
Proceedings of the Bahrain Conference, January 2024
The Lizhi 荔枝 (Lychee) in Chinese Literature
Translation of Chinese Sources by Michael J. Hagerty. With an introduction and edited by Hartmut Walravens
Volume 66
