Dieter Jäkel
（Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany）
In August 1982, on the occasion of the XI INQUA Congress, I participated in a field trip from Moscow to Usbekistan and Tadjikistan. Several one-day excursion started from Dujanbe. One of them, on August 16, led to a loess section at Karmaidan. There, Prof. Dadanov of the Geological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, explained the stratigraphy of the excellently prepared section. Prof. Liu Tungsheng, the head of the Chinese delegation, whom I had not come to know until then, was fascinated by the section and posed many critical questions to Prof. Dadanov. These developed into a very fruitful discussion, which could easily followed by the bystanders mainly thanks to Liu Tunghsheng’s excellent knowledge of the English language. I regarded it as a fortunate coincidence that I, as a professor at the Free University of Berlin, could perceive in Liu’s statements a consequent continuation of the loess research in China that had been initiated by Ferdinand von Richthofen. I managed to get s snapshot of members of the field trip together with the two debaters. At the end of the discussion Prof. Liu walked up to the section alone to take his photographs without being disturbed.
I had been very much impressed by him, and thus I tried to talk to him. I told him that I had been working in the central Sahara for almost 20 years, and I asked him whether geomorphological research in the Chinese deserts would be possible for foreigners. He answered in the affirmative and suggested to send a proposal to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). I took this as a sign of encouragement. My impression was confirmed when, back in Moscow, I had to leave the field-trip bus earlier than the others: Prof. Liu came forward from his seat in the back of the bus to give me, as a farewell gift, a map, at the scale of 1:4 million, of the desert and sand-dune areas of China. At that moment I was sure to have won a friend, an assumption that proved right over the years.
In 1983 I sent my research proposal concerning the Chinese deserts to the Academy in Beijing, simultaneously with a copy to Liu Tungsheng. There was no response, though. Therefore I signed up for an international symposium “The Climate of China and the Global Climate) from Oct. 30 to Nov. 3, 1984, in Beijing. When I showed a copy of the proposal to Prof. Liu at the symposium, he told me that he had never received it. Right on the same day he arranged a meeting for me with the president of the Academy, to whom I could explain my plans in a one-hour talk. Thanks to Liu’s help I had taken a step forward. Alas, I again waited in vain for the promised answer and evaluation of my proposal.
When I told this to Prof Liu at our next meeting, at the ice-breaker party of the 1st International Geomorphological Congress in Manchester, on Sept. 15, 1985, he reacted with disappointment. But he also at once new a solution to my problem, telling me that those Chinese colleagues with whom I might work together, were also at the conference, and that he would introduce me to them. Thus I came to know the Head of the Institute of Desert Research in Landshou (IDRAS), Prof. Zhu Zhenda, Yang Youlin, his interpreter, as well as other members of his institute. They were very enthusiastic at once about my plan to undertake, together with them, an expedition from Kunlun Shan to the Taklimakan, in a transect along the Keriya River. Moderated by Liu Tungsheng, within the next hour the details of the expedition were hammered out in a vociferous party at a round table. The ice had been broken, so that the first Chinese-German Kunlun Shan-Taklimakan Expedition could be carried out from the end of August to the end of October 1986. It was such a success that the second expedition followed as early s 1988, when a transect from Qilian Shan to the Baidan Jaran Desert was studied.
I chose this narration of the origin and development of our cooperation in order to emphasize Prof. Liu Tungsheng’s endeavours for international cooperation. From my own experience, they always took place in an inconspicuous way. From the outside one could not tell to what extent political guidelines and high-level decisions of the People’s Republic of China, or of the science administration, had to be taken into consideration. In the course of reorientation and opening of the country by Teng Xiaoping in the 1970s and 1980s, there was a new beginning in the economy and sciences still felt today. Liu Tungsheng was an ideal representative of these new times, although he may not have been liked in all places in China for this. He made great efforts to obtain foreign exchange scholarships for Chinese students, just as he tried to win as many distinguished colleagues from abroad for a cooperation with Chinese scientific institutions. Whenever he had succeeded, he personally took care of the well-being of the guests and the support of their projects. I will never forgot how he, very late in an evening in 1986, showed up in the Friendship Hotel of Beijing, to ask whether we had been well accommodated and whether the hotel staff was taking good care of us. This care became a hallmark of all my travels in China, more than 25 by now. Whenever Liu could not be around personally, he would put one of his assistants in charge with this service of hospitality. I have always admired him for his selfless support.
Of course we always, at the end of an expedition, informed him of the results obtained, which would always lead to fruitful discussions. In these, he would also always involve the junior scientists who had participated, encouraging by his advice, assuring them of his support, and thus acting as an excellent mentor for the next generation of scientists. As he was open to any new approach and the results obtained by them, and as he also was a patient listener, who would unselfishlessly pass on methodological knowledge from his broad knowledge, he won many a friend.
It thus comes as no surprise that he would find access to the international scientific community and its bodies. Thanks to his power of persuasion the XIII INQUA Congress of 1991 took place in Beijing. At the Ottawa/Canada congress he impressively phrased the invitation, after Beijing’s application had been accepted by the INQUA council, inviting his fellow scientists to come to China and contribute to methodologically advancing Quaternary research there, which, as will have appeared from the preceding lines, he was very much concerned about. The success of the congress under his presidency was such that he was elected president of the INQUA for the 1991-1995 period. In this position he was in charge of the XIV INQUA Congress in Berlin in 1995. He visited us in December 1992 to get informed on the status of preparations.
During his visit he also spoke at a colloquium in the building of the Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, the geographical society, of which Ferdinand von Richthofen had been the chairman for many years towards the end of the 19th century. In memory of his ground-breaking loess studies, Liu present the present status of loess research in China. His joy of being able to speak in an environment affected by the spirit of von Richthofen, gave wings to his thoughts, and he produced ideas that left a deep impression on his listeners. On the next day, we made a field trip to Rüdersdorf, near Berlin, where Otto Torell, the Swedish geologist, in 1875, by discovering the glacial striae there, had proved that there had been Nordic inland ice glaciation. Prof. Cepek, once a leading Quaternary scientist in the German Democratic Republic, was guiding us. Thanks to his excellent knowledge of the muschelkalk quarry he could lead us to the so-called Kreuzspalte, where some striations as well as meltwater-scoured potholes still gave evidence of the more than 100 m of inland ice that had once blanketed the area. In brilliant sunshine, Prof. Liu was thus granted the opportunity to took photographs and to document the relics of this world-famous site, before it fell victim to the quarry power shovels in the following year. The group photograph printed here, taken at the memorial stone erected for Otto Torell at Rüdersdorf, ended this memorable Dec. 6, 1992, showing Prof. Liu together with Prof. Cepek and Prof. Derbyshire as well as a number of graduate and doctoral students.
It meant a lot to Prof. Liu Tungsheng to have witnessed the glacial striae and potholes being the first unequivocal evidence of the Scandinavian inland ice glaciation, as it was his aim to merge the geomorphological evidence of all climatic and altitudinal zones in a concept of climatic changes, for understanding and presenting landscape changes. Evidence of the major changes that had shaped the landscapes of Europe during the several glaciations, should just as well be verified in China. He would never accept the argument that far-reaching landscape changes there could not have taken place, because they would be inconceivable. He would study all evidence and the facts and interpret them in the light of numerical models obtained from various disciplines, and compare the results with those of his own loess research.
He gave much attention to the studies conducted on the Tibet Plateau. He regarded with favour, though also very critically, the evidence presented by kuhle on the inland glaciation of Tibet. He felt that the vision presented by him went too far, but he also distrusted the arguments of Kuhle’s opponents, who he thought concealed or ignored certain facts. As I myself had been concerned in the field on the Tibet glaciation problem from 1998 to 2004, we discussed it after each field campaign. It was my endeavour to discover more pieces of the puzzle of the landscape history of the Tibet Plateau. We shared the opinion that further research would be needed for a final judgement on the phenomena observed. Our position has triggered bitter attacks against him and myself, from the assumption that we were clandestine supporters of Kuhle’s opinion.
Now the ever-alert spirit of Prof Liu Tungsheng has ceased to exist: a great loss for many questions yet unanswered. For me it is the loss of an invaluable scientific dialogue partner and friend, who was always on my side and supported me. As a retired university teacher I no longer have access to research funding, and for health reasons I would no longer be able to do field work on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau. Therefore our concepts and ideas will have to be tested by a younger generation. For me, with the death of Prof. Liu Tungsheng, a very close friendship has come to an end. I am grateful that I could enjoy it.
Thanks to Prof. Detlef Busche, who translated the manuscript from German to English language.
