PLANT BIODIVERSITY PROJECT
RESEARCH IN YANGJUAN/PIANSHUI
YANGJUAN PRIMARY SCHOOL
YANGJUAN HOME PAGE
The Nuosu people of Yangjuan and Pianshui have a rich heritage of knowledge about their own environment. But over the last 50 years of revolutionary change, not all this knowledge has been passed down to all members of the younger generation. In order to preserve this important local knowledge for present and future generations, UW students Victoria Poling and Marie Tsiang began an ethnobotany project in Yangjuan in 2002, which was carried forward by Rachel Meyer in 2003-04. It is closely coordinated with the plant biodiversity project, and will be a key element in a local curriculum project that we are now beginning.
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Mgebbu Ashy, born in 1934, has encyclopedic knowledge of plants and the local environment, and is eager to help our students learn and record this information. At left, he digs a plant in a karst sinkhole, or lakedde, near Yangjuan; at right he explains about a plant to Victoria Poling. | |
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Ashy's granddaughter Vuga entered Sichuan Agricultural University in Fall, 2004; when she returns home on her vacations she helps with research; here she is working with Victoria Poling on the ethnobotany project, collecting one more plant for the growing database.
PLANT BIODIVERSITY PROJECT |
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On their second trip to Yangjuan, Victoria and Marie collected more plants and plant names, and also began to understand Nuosu ethnobotany more systematically. |