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20 years of Cactus and Adventures

    Dear Readers,

    It is already 20 years ago, in June 1989, that tanks of the Red Army invaded Tienanmen Square in Beijing. I had the bad idea to cross the deserts of Gobi and Ordos on a bicycle just at this time, and 14 years after my first request, my visa had finally been accepted.
    I escaped from Tienanmen without understanding too much what was happening, however I was arrested and assigned to residence in my hotel. The military had done things well: My photographic material (three cameras, telephoto lens and camera- motorization etc.) were stolen, just after my bicycle has suffered the same fate. I had nothing more to do in China. Anyway I had no right to stay there.
    Alone in the immense hotel, waiting to be repatriated, I “escaped” towards the Botanical Garden of Beijing. I had with me one of the first issues of the newly born Cactus-Adventures International, and it was my passport to enter.
    So, I met Xu Min Sheng,, then Director of the Garden; the old man wore tortoiseshell -rimmed spectacles, although at this moment, I was not able to remember of whom he reminded me. Botany is a universal language and Xu Ming Sheng invited me to see the cactus greenhouse. I remember these astrophytums grafted on never ending and curved Hylocereus of almost a meter high and seedlings of Lithops whose seeds had been sent by some South African Botanical garden.
    Back to his office, he offered me a book he wrote on cacti; written in mandarin, the book had illustrations including remaining Chinese old prints drawn with Indian ink.
    It was only when I went back to France that I realized what was happened then in Beijing. I lived through a tragic event of which I had no idea.
    Suddenly my memory came back: with his fine tortoiseshell -rimmed spectacles, Xu Min Sheng reminded me the final scene of the film “The Last Emperor”. Of course, he wasn’t Pu Yi, but through the irony of history, Pu Yi finished his life as a gardener at the Botanical Garden of Beijing, and Xu Min Sheng was director.
    Of course, I was not able to stay longer in China, but despite all, I will keep an imperishable souvenir of this true story.