In this summer break, my family traveled to Zhalong natural reserves of red-crowned cranes located in Qiqihar, the second largest city of Heilongjiang province Northeast of China. Zhalong is one of the best natural reserves for red-crowned crane in the world, which was established from 1975 with only 140 cranes.
In 1990, a song named 'the story of red-crowned crane' was very popular in china, ‘go thru this reed marshes, have you ever heard a song from a pretty girl…’, with the thru-country popularity of this song, people knew a real story about cranes and one family spreaded by the song.
The story is about a pretty girl named Xiujuan Xu, she gave up the comfortable life in urban and went to Zhalong to continue her farther to be a crane keeper. Due to cute temper of this kind of bird, it is not easy for any stanger to touch it, only familiar people can. At that time, Xiujuan’s farther lived very close to cranes, and often survived help-needing cranes, gradually, this families was accepted by cranes, that was why her farther was arranged to keep cranes in Zhalong natural reserves.
Xiujuan is the olded girl in this family, and she warmed crane’s egg on heated brick bed with her farther together, so that she is very clear for crane’s temper. Not only she worked in Zhalong, but also she went to work in salt city of Jiangsu province where cranes migrated for winter, she ever took 3 days from Zhalong to Salt city with 3 eggs warming by her body. As we all know, the artificial incubation of crane is a top-difficult issues in the world, because any little changes on temperature or humidity will lead a failure of incubation. human bady-based incubation as what Xiujuan did was applauded by many experts worldwide.
In Zhalong, half-wilderness is the must for keeping cranes, it is a very hard work and very exhausted job, almost every day, keeper need watering and feeding all cranes, and cleaning cranes’s nest, additionally, keeper must lead all cranes to be out of room and free walk/fly outside to touch nature, but sometime a few of young cranes could lost home way and put themselves in dangerous situation such as be killed by other animal or electric. That is in Sept 15, 1987, another two young cranes were lost, and Xiujuan looked for everywhere exhaustedly, but nothing found, in the next early morning, Xiujuan heard a light call of cranes, and harry up to pursuit it without breakfast till the sunset, and no result, but someone told her cranes called in western, Xiujuan went to look for although she was tried extremely, finally, we did not get the news about lost cranes instead of sad news of the death of Xiujuan, she slipped into marshland…, She is the 1st martyr of environment protection, after 2 years, this story was edited to be popular song, and spreaded over the country.
Do you think the story was ended here? Factually no, Jianfeng Xu, the young brother of Xiujuan, he is a veteran working in a states-owned enterprise of Qiqihar, he followed the persuade of parents to continue his old sister to keep cranes in Zhalong natural reserves. But Jianfeng’s life was stopped up to Apr 19, 2014 as well as hard working to keep cranes too. On this day, there was an fierce unknown wild fire nearing one of in-incubation crane’s nest, Jianfeng worried about those eggs and rided on his motorcycle to head to nest recklessly, but motorcycle run out of control in high speed and rush in marshland, yes, marshland again, his life was stopped on 47 years forever after 27 years as cranes keeper, this family experienced huge sadness again with the same way on different person. every time I read the story here, I was teared.
Till now, seem like the story is closing to the end? Exactly, let me renew the story up to date.
Zhuo Xu, daughter of Jianfeng, she went into Northeast Forest University with the major of wildlife conservation in stead of previous one. after 2 years, she finished her campus study and refused the recommendation of postgraduate, and back to Zhalong without any hesitation to be family’s 3rd generation continuing to keep cranes. Zhuo wrote a sentence on his farther’s notebook: I will go on this honor way to go on our memorable times.
So far, I believe every one of this family is the red-crowned cranes in our heart.