A visit to the Museum of Paleontology

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Last week was Science and Technology Week of our school, during which the Biology and Geography teaching and researching group offered some of our students a chance to visit the Nanjing Museum of Palaeontology, and I was lucky enough to get the opportunity. That weekend, our Chinese teacher assigned an informal essay, and I wrote the reflections on the visit and my thoughts on studying Geography. Later, that essay received a quite high mark - I realised from reading my Chinese teacher’s comments that her husband is a geography teacher, and she got touched by my enthusiasm. I never think I’m a good writer or a profound thinker, but I did want to translate and post this article here, as a way of recording of my little reflections as I am growing up.

A visit to the Museum of Paleontology

Fang Ziyan Class 7

Cold front crossing.

Stratocirrus.

The sunlight lovingly linger on the autumn day.

I.

In May of Grade 10, I finally decided that I wanted to apply for a Geography major in the future – I am always attracted by a variety of subjects, hence it was a little bit hard to make my final choice. However, the deeper I study about Geography, the more I felt I was suited to it, and then it became an overwhelming passion, affirming my determination. Within the past five months, I had read several books and accumulated a certain amount of knowledge. This museum visit organised by the our school’s geography and biology teaching and researching groups was a even good opportunity to practise.

I had memorised so many theories, but it wasn’t until I stood in front of a whole wall of fossils of different shapes and colours that I understood the meaning of the words in black and white. For example, I recognised the rounded spiral shape of ammonite, but I didn’t know that it had evolved from hornblende: the long, pointed shell of hornblende made it not easy for them to balance themselves, so the pointed shell eventually developed into a flat shell of ammonite. What’s more, I had of course remembered that the ammonite was the index fossil with a fast rate of evolution and a short existence time, but till asking the mesuem docents I learned its specific reason for not surviving the Cretaceous extinction is that the acidic seawater made the calcium brittle and caused it to become less resistant to pressure.

From being a little kid hanging out in museum galleries and illustrations in encyclopaedias, to choosing geography as future major and learning a certain amount of related knowledge, to now hanging out in museum galleries again with a few geoscience-loving kids with me and asking a series of questions to the docents – What I want to say is, your vision determines your choices, and your choices again determine your vision.

II.

Step ahead into the second year of high school, students around me began to get anxious. There is always endless homework and frequent exams. For those of us who are studying in ordinary Chinese high schools and want to apply for foreign universities, it is really challenging to not only follow the courses of gaokao (the college entrance examination of China) but also learn foreign high school courses on our own. In addition, although I am deeply passionate my major, geography, there are quite few people around me who apply for it, hence sometimes I would feel a little lonely.

However, interestingly, it’s not like what people always say – “You might find solace from something other than studying, e.g. travalling, playing video games, to ease your anxiety.”

Sometimes… the solace comes from your major itself. No matter how you grumble the boring life you might face in order to successfully apply for it, if you love it enough, it will embrance you back with its own little philosophies - as an antidote to your anxiety.

Walking around the museum, I gained new insights into many familiar knowledge. I came up with the five biological extinctions, which were always followed by an explosion of new creature. I came up with the Milankovitch Cycle and Wilson Cyclone – everything separate and emerge again and again. I came up with the red junipers on top of the mountains, sweeping the clouds from the fog and sleeping on the moon for thousands of years; the sands of the desert, with the sun rises and the moon sinks, only to be silent; the basalt cape, with the tide rises and falls, the waves open and close, only to stands still… Why worry that there are no companions? Why be anxious about the boring and tiring endless days?

III.

There are times when I want to ask myself, where do my passion for the subject of geography come from?

When I was a child, my grandfather was always loved to study the map of China, and every time I went out on public transport he would passionately teach me to recognize and remember the traffic routes. Kindergarten overs early every day, so he would always take me around Nanjing on his bicycle to various places of interest. I also remember that my favourite set of books as a child was the Encyclopaedia my mother bought me, which talked about the earth and the universe, with fabulous pictures of ancient creatures. Also, every summer and winter, I always had the opportunity to go back to my hometown in Anhui, to embrace the mountains and fields, to appreciate the fireworks under the stars, and to listen to the adults in the village chat happily about the minutiae of their lives: how the weather affected the harvest, how much money they made from selling vegetables, which mountain to climb tomorrow, and whose field was going to be used by the town for constructing buildings. Perhaps this is why I had more experience of enjoying the nature and living in the town than other city children. Also, another possible reason is that, my dad is a crazy travel lover. There’s no denying that the days spent travelling with him to Europe, the USA, Japan and Korea and many of the provinces in China have become a profound background of my life.

IV.

On the way back to school, sky is clear, clouds are light, trees are bright yellow. The wind blows, and the ginkgo leaves fell in a shallow warm sun.

The ginkgo is the seven-million-year-old ginkgo.

The sun is the eternal sun.