The Forgotten Gardener, the Avenue of Civilization, and the longest street in China

Luther Burbank

Luther Burbank most likely would never have been able to locate the city ofLangfang^W on a map of China.  As a lifelong botanist and horticulturalist, Mr. Burbank spent a good deal of his time in the garden in his modest Californian home.  Asian explorer he was not.  Amongst other creations, Mr. Burbank is credited with developing more than “800 strains of plants” inluding the creation of:

• 113 plums and prunes
• 11 plumcots
• 4 grapes
• 10 cherries
• 2 figs
• 1 almond
• 8 peaches
• the Idaho potato (favored by McDonald’s)
• 11 quinces….and many many more

*(Above information taken directly from Wikipedia)

Luther Burbank couldn’t speak a word of Chinese.  He may be the most famous botanist and horticulturalist you’ve never heard of (unless you happen to be studying a horticulture/botany, or you come from his hometown of Lancaster, Massachusetts).  According to historical documents,my own personal research, and intuition, he never once traveled to China.  Still, it is because of China, and more specifically because of my recent trip to the nearby city of Langfang in Hebei Province that I am now aware of Mr. Burbank’s agricultural prowress, innovation, and ingenuity.  It took Langfang to introduce me to this pillar of modern civilization.

Oriental University City

Langfang is about halfway between Beijing and Tianjin, two of China’s urban monsters.  When my good friend, Simon, and I were planning our visit to Langfang, we once again received strange looks of confusion from our Chinese friends.  We were spurred onwards towards Langfang by the comments, “nothing to see there,” “don’t waste your time,” and “why are you going there?”  Going to a place that is not recommended by Chinese always turns out to be the best recommendation because of the surprises that await us upon arrival.

Prior to leaving for Langfang, I did a bit of research on the web.  I discovered that located in the city center was China’s longest pedestrian street.  There was also a selection of parks located throughout the city center.  Just on the outskirts of the city one could also visit “Oriental University City,” a collection of recently constructed universities (founded in 2000).

As we pulled into the university area, Simon and I were immediately greeted by a long avenue that was made to look like Paris’ Champs de L’Eysee.  In the middle of the avenue was a small replica of L’Arc de Triomphe.  Simon’s eyes widened.  He gasped twice, and was at a loss for words as his head moved in the direction of the Arc while we passed it, his face pressing up against the glass.  I knew we would have to get out and document this avenue.  Tears formed in his eyes, his mouth agape, the only sound coming out of his joyous expression were ecstatic grunts.  

As soon as we exited the bus, we were thrust into Homer’s “Odyssey,” crashing upon the shores of an Island of Sirens.  The proportion of female students to male students was astounding, and…it seemed they were all smiling.  I stopped one of them, a young girl from Shijiazhuang (Hebei’s capital), and asked her how far Oriental City was from central Langfang.

“It’s a little far to walk.  Maybe about 10km.  Do you need help?  I’m very happy to help you.  I really don’t mind.  Can I help you?”  I took down her number, and told her that maybe we would contact her later. We passed more sirens, the Sun beating down on us as we pulled out our umbrellas to shade ourselves from the hottest part of the day that was yet to come.

“Hello,” a long-legged Siren giggled to us as she walked in the opposite direction.  I waved with a smile and said, “hello,” tempted for the slightest of moments to give up my goal of documenting the landmarks of Oriental University City.  Pressing on, we continued to walk along the avenue.

At the head of the long boulevard was an immense brick monument with statues of children reading–another ode to education.  The message on the monument was plain and simple, and filled with hope for the future:  “for our children to enter the great hall of higher education.”  The weather was getting hotter and hotter.  We walked under the shade of the nearby trees lining the boulevard.  It was then that we noticed the plaques.

All along the both sides of the boulevard were plaques dedicated to historical figures.  These plaques were dark in color, possibly meant to look as if they were made of copper.  They were almost unnoticeable.  Every 50 feet, there would be a new plaque dedicated to some historical figure.  The plaques already seemed to be rusting with age (despite only being erected in the past decade).  History’s pillars of civilization flanked us on both sides, silently watching us with their immobile eyes, their gazes bearing down on us.  Others looked upwards or off to the side shyly, or as if they were contemplating some epiphany that had just come to them in a dream.  We walked along and read the names.  These were some of the people who the designers of Oriental University City had decided needed to be remembered in the hearts and minds of China’s youth as the “cornerstones of civiliaztion”:

• Copernicus
• Anthony Van Leeuwenhoek
• Mohammed
• Magellan
• Plato
• Constantine the Great
• Cai Lun
• Ghengis Khan
• Columbus
• Leonhard Euler
• Cromwell
• James Watt
• George Washington
• Shakespeare
• Jean Jacques Rousseau
• Edward Jenner
• Mozart
• Thomas Malthos
• Hegel
• Edison
• Luther Burbank

 Luther Burbank?  Edward Jenner?   Thomas Malthos?  Who the hell were these guys and what were they doing in Langfang?  And did all the students here know who they were?  The plaques seemed neglected and almost lonely lining the street towards the two monuments.  Some of them were rusting with age (despite only being erected in the past decade).  There were even a couple of them that appeared to have been stolen.  I could only wonder whose names had been on the missing plaques, now stowed secretly in some student’s dormitory,  having been lured there by the allure of the Siren’s song.  Oscar Mayer?  R.T.H. Laennec?  Giacomo Rizzolati?  It seemed history was a random grab bag of figures set up here in no particular order, and anyone was game to pop up in Langfang.  (This comment is by no means intended to take away from the great historical contributions attributed to these figures).  I jotted down some of the names and resolved to brush up on my history as soon as I returned to Beijing, putting an asterisk next to Luther Burbank’s name…the lonely gardener.  Something about his name struck me, like a hiccup in my soul.  I felt like I owed it to his memory to know him.  He was put on this spot for a reason.  I kept repeating his name, trying not to remember it, and then almost instantly forgetting it, mangling his name to “Arthur Bramble,” or “Lester Brambrich,” etc.  Simon shook his head and spoke with an ironic tone.

“This guy means nothing to me.  I will treat him as air.”  Well said, I thought, knowing that it was an offhand compliment. We need air to breathe.  Deep down I knew that he also agreed that these pillars of civilization needed to be recalled and remembered, and he couldn’t help but have a secret sense of respect for Mr. Burbank and his neighbors on the avenue.  A fellow Swiss, Leonhard  Euler, attracted his attention the same way Mr. Burbank attracted mine.

 Discovery

Oriental University City and its Avenue of Civilization were only the beginning of our trip to Langfang, a two day journey filled with surprise and discovery.   Simon and I would later take a bus 10km into the city center and visit Century Square, established and built by CPP (China Petroleum Pipeline).  We stood in the square and observed the monstrous monument shaped like a globe being grasped by robotic arms .  A friendly little man named Liu Gui Chun spoke with us while he watched his son ride around in the park on a unicycle.  He told us of Langfang’s population boom after CPP located their offices and 20,000 jobs to the city in 1973.  While I spoke with him about CPP’s development in Langfang, Simon chatted with a round young boy on rollerblades about Chinese pizza vs. Italian pizza.     We decided to give the boy the English name “Origus” after a famous chain of pizza buffet restaurants.   In the evening, inspired by the conversation with the roly-poly boy, we would actually eat in an Origus Pizza buffet restaurant. 

We walked along the longest pedestrian street in China, its buildings’ facades modeled after European architecture, as if the Romans had returned to invade.  It seemed every building was lined with columns, and at the end of some sections there would be large European fountains, currently dry and out of use.  Along the way to Origus we discovered one of the longest continuous sections of red light districts I have ever seen in the north of China.  Scantily clad women came out to greet us and tried to beckon us inside, one even saying, “make free love now” in English.  These red light districts have all but been wiped out in Beijing and Tianjin, in a cleansing purge leading up to the Olympics.  They surprisingly manage to survive and thrive in nearby Langfang, giving the city’s night scene a raunchier texture from the two powerhorses.  I wondered if any of these women had studied botany and knew of Mr. Burbank, but I neglected to ask them myself for fear of insulting their intelligence. 

On our second day we journeyed to the city’s northwestern suburbs and explored its lush Nature Park before returning to Beijing.  Due to the park’s size, we decided to rent a small vehicle about the size of a golf cart, rather than tour the park on foot.  The vehicle’s top speed was only a bit faster than my own walking speed.  Dubbing it, “The Green Dragon,” we pressed pedal to the metal and proceeded through the park, the trees, the manmade lakes, the inflatable balls on the lakes, the rickety-bridges, and the young families posing for pictures amidst the greenery until we came upon a lovely grassy knoll filled with statues of white stone elephants for a rest.

On the bus back to Beijing, I couldn’t help shaking my head and thinking to myself, they just don’t know…they just don’t know.  Everyplace has something to see.  Everyplace has someone or something you can learn about.  If we had listened to all of those naysayers who said that there was nothing in Langfang, we would have missed its true face.  Like scientists and explorers we were lovers of “truth for the very love of truth itself, wherever it may lead” (Luther Burbank, quoted from Great Quotations by George Seldes).   The truth just happened to lead us to Langfang this time.  From the Avenue of Civilization in Oriental University City to the CPP monument in Century Square, from the red lights of China’s longest pedestrian street to the aging white stones of the elephant sculptures in the Nature Park, I knew that our journey to Langfang was not in vain but a journey of discovery and truth.  As we rode back through the town, I felt exhausted with all the new names, information, and scenes that my brain had processed during our short stay in this nowhere city.  Suddenly, I was drifting in and out of consciousness, dozing off to visions of Royal Walnuts, carefully cultivated technicolor daisies, and other Burbank creations.  I found myself in a space/time warp, first in Lancaster, Massachussets, then Santa Rosa, California, and finally Langfang, Hebei.  I was nurturing flowers in a sun hat with the same amount of care one would take to nurture a small child, a plumcot’s juice dripping  from my mouth and sweat glistening on my brow.  In a moment of interstate wake-dream, I swore I saw a vision of Luther Burbank, the “Wizard of Plant Life, a pillar of civilization, winking at me in gratitude as our bus pulled onto the highway, away from history and towards the garden of the future.

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