This atlas was drawn by Nie Huang, a folk painter and biology lover in Kangxi period.

Nie Huang suffered from an atlas of marine life that had not been circulated in the society at that time, so he traveled around and recorded more than 300 kinds of marine life. The whole painting is illustrated and illustrated, which is called Finding Nemo in the Forbidden City.

Emperors of all ages loved this painting, and Qianlong also attached great importance to this set of books. He repaired the album, framed it and put it in his room. Every day before going to bed, I have to turn it over: "I have been a horse for half my life, and this book satisfies my imagination of the sea!" " "The last income" The Sequel of Shiqu Baodi "is a collection of royal paintings and calligraphy in the Qing Dynasty compiled by myself.

So, what kind of book is "Sea Mist Map", and does it really exist in the biological reality in the book? Or is it a mysterious story of Zhi like Shan Hai Jing?

Zhang Chenliang, a naturalist, is as confused as we are.

As the editor of Natural History magazine, he has been interested in biology since he was a child.

In 20 14, the Palace Museum in Beijing compiled and published the ancient book Sea Mistakes in Qing Dynasty. He immediately ran to the sales point next to Shenwumen in the Forbidden City, bought the book and read it.

He used today's biological perspective to analyze the creatures in Haicuotu, and went to Guangdong, Fujian, Japan and other places for textual research, and finally integrated 30 reading notes-Haicuotu Notes.

Notes on marine fault map

The Annotation of Sea Miscellaneous Pictures adopts the classification of China traditional cursive script, and divides the creatures in the book into four categories, namely ostriches, scales, insects and birds.

In these 30 articles, there are popular science of marine life, textual research of old papers, and anecdotes about China people and the sea.

At the beginning of each biological chapter of Notes on Wrong Chart, the contents of Nie Huang's book Wrong Chart will be attached: hand-drawing+text description+a poem. So according to these inferences, is there such a creature today, or is it purely hearsay by Nie Huang?

Some creatures Nie Huang painted very carefully. At first glance, they were sketched from real objects, such as stone fish and mackerel.

Rock fish is the present large yellow croaker, named after two "sagittal stones" on its head.

Nie Huang also painted a special picture among his paintings, and noted that there were two stones on his head. It can be said that it is very detailed.

"Sea Wrong Map" also records the alias "Spring Come" of Pseudosciaena crocea, because its fishing season is in spring, and it is said that Pseudosciaena crocea mostly appears in the South China Sea, spawning offshore in spring, where fishermen are waiting to catch fish.

Zhang Chenliang pointed out the inaccuracy: Pseudosciaena crocea is not only found in the South China Sea, but also in the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea. They don't lay their eggs offshore, but almost all of them reach the shore. So there is a saying: "This man belongs to yellow croaker-he ran away."

Pseudosciaena crocea in Sea Fog Map

Details such as stone fish, bamboo pod fish map. Nie Huang's bamboo pod fish picture is almost exactly the same as the real thing, which makes people have to suspect that he painted it against the bamboo pod fish.

Nie Huang said: the tail of the bamboo pod fish is like the wings of a swallow. There are eight little wings on the back, six little wings on the bottom and three little wings on the tail.

Zhang Chenliang explained: The number of winglets of "up and down" is not fixed, some are "up and down" and some are "up and down", which are collectively called "off-fins". As for the three protrusions on the tail, they are not real fins, but raised meat ridges.

The wrong map of the bamboo pod fish in the sea

Nie Huang didn't see all the creatures in Haicuotu with his own eyes. Some of them were just hearsay and his own imagination.

Zhang Chenliang said, "What he observed is more like a painting, and what he did not observe is more imaginative." .

Like a mermaid ... this is probably the ugliest mermaid we have ever seen.

Modern people are familiar with the concept of mermaid. Whether in China or abroad, the legend of mermaid is circulating.

Red rays and mermaids appear many times in Shan Hai Jing, saying that they have faces, voices and babies.

According to the Natural History of Jin Dynasty, Jiao Ren could spin, and his body was still fish-shaped.

The description of the mermaid in Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio in Song Dynasty is more like a person: red clothes, two breasts and messy hair.

Abroad, Andersen's fairy tale The Daughter of the Sea is deeply rooted in people's hearts. Everyone believed that mermaids must be "beautiful" mermaids when they were young.

However, this mermaid is really the ugliest in history.

When a Cantonese told Nie Huang about this creature, he didn't believe it. This is weird and ugly.

But when I saw that both the Official History and Zhengzitong recorded this creature, which was "human-like, with five senses of limbs, black hair and yellow flesh, with red wings and short tail behind it", I drew it into the book-a balding middle-aged man with long fins on his back. Really a "soul painter" of the Qing Dynasty.

The ugliest mermaid in history

In the Sea Fog Map, it is said that someone caught a mermaid in Guangdong and kept it in a pool. "I can't talk, I can only laugh", which reminds people of dugong.

Dugong is the most human-like marine creature, and now it is generally considered as the mermaid in people's mouth.

It's just that the mermaid painted by Dugong and Nie Huang is so different that it's really unconstrained!

In the process of textual research, Zhang Chenliang also found that some creatures only belong to myths and legends.

For example, arowana, Yanlong and so on. In the wrong sea map, there are also anecdotes such as "sharks turn into tigers" and "tiles turn into clams", which are also nonsense.

Interesting, that is, the feeling of reading "Notes on Sea Mistakes".

Zhang Chenliang said: Humor is just an effective way of popular science knowledge, so that people can not only feel fun from it, but also gain knowledge.

This coincides with Nie Huang's idea.

Such as "don't" and "easy" turtle feet.

Tortoise foot, also known as cactus, tortoise foot and bergamot shell, is a crustacean.

The feet of young turtles can swim and crawl. Once they find the right reef, they will fix themselves and gradually become turtle feet.

The bottom should be fixed to resist the impact of waves, so it is particularly hard.

Its head sticks out "thin claws" to the finger-like shell plate to catch plankton in the water.

There is an anecdote about turtle feet in Wrong Chart:

Because of its peculiar shape, people in the Central Plains don't know it.

There was a man from the Central Plains who was an official in Xiapu, Fujian. He saw a turtle's foot in the market and wanted to buy it to taste, but he wanted to ask others its name, so he wrote down "Buy me something that looks like a non-Chinese character or an easy-to-read Chinese character". His men guessed for a long time and bought it after receiving instructions. At first glance, the Central Plains people saw this!

Such as "don't" and "easy" turtle feet.

It seems that Nie Huang's joke is as low as mine.

Dolphin: Greek spirit beast, China lazy woman.

As the name implies, dolphins are "pigs in the sea". Because it is a mammal, its internal organs are more like pigs, so it is named "dolphin".

Coincidentally, Europeans have the same idea when naming dolphins. "Dolphin" comes from the Greek word "uterus", that is, fish with uterus.

Dolphins are smart and lovely animals, which is basically the knowledge of modern people, but in ancient times, people in the East and the West had different views on them.

In fact, the finless porpoise painted the wrong sea map.

In the traditional culture of China, the image of dolphins is not good.

Fishermen think dolphins are unlucky and will get angry when they are caught fishing. According to legend, dolphins were changed from lazy women. They use dolphin fat to light a lamp. When they are placed in the playing place, the lamp will be on, and when they are placed in front of the loom, the lamp will be dim.

This shows how much the ancients hated dolphins.

In contrast, Europeans have a very good attitude towards dolphins.

According to legend, the ancient Greek musician arion met a gangster on the boat and tried to kill him. He asked to finish singing a song and then jump into the sea. A dolphin was moved by his singing and saved him. Later, dolphins became the "Dolphin Constellation" in the night sky.

Europeans regard dolphins as spiritual animals. In ancient Greece, killing dolphins was even executed.

Eating is an important part of the original work, and it is also the most common entry point for China people to understand biology.

Zhang Chenliang's Nautical Notes is also very similar to this cookbook. Under many creatures, he described the cooking and eating methods in detail, with pictures of food.

"You can't just treat animals as resources. I wrote clearly in the book that if an animal can be legally caught, I will write how to eat it; If an animal is rare or endangered now, I will write down its present situation and introduce how the ancients ate and used it. 」

The famous yellow croaker in the sea

Pseudosciaena crocea has always been a favorite fish in China, with garlic cloves and fewer thorns.

The famous ones are dry-roasted yellow croaker with Shandong cuisine and large yellow croaker with Ningbo snow cuisine. The swim bladder can also be made into yellow croaker jelly, which has nutritional and medicinal value.

Wild large yellow croaker whose price is higher than gold.

Make fish into dried fish, which the ancients called fish.

It is recorded in the Marine Fault Map:

"He is a fish shark, but it has not been beautiful for a long time ... but a stone fish shark, take good care of it everywhere, the longer the better. 」

As a result, large yellow croaker has become the first shark, and steaming shark to drink or stew meat is a very delicious way to eat.

In winter, jumping fish and river eel compete.

Jumping a fish is just jumping around. As a fish, it likes to stay on land.

This is because they require more oxygen and simply stay on the ground and jump around.

There are several kinds of mudskippers in China. People only like to eat big mudskippers, which taste the best.

There is a saying in Ningbo, Zhejiang that "jumping fish in winter is not as good as river eel". They think that the mud in winter is fat but not fishy.

Jumping around on paintballs.

Mud-wrapped fish should use fresh fish so as not to waste its flavor. Can be wrapped in batter and fried, that is, salt and pepper to jump fish;

You can also fry pickles with soy sauce;

The best way is to fry it and cook it with tofu, that is, a pot of milky jumping fish tofu soup, which is extremely delicious.

There are also some creatures that once existed and are now almost extinct in the sea.

For example, wan e.

The Map of Marine Faults records a kind of bay-e in which Zhancheng (now southern Vietnam) paid tribute to Guo (now northern Vietnam) during the Kangxi period. It is six meters long, golden yellow and armored.

Bay and Hubei are warm. In the Tang Dynasty, the climate was warm, and the Gulf and Hubei spread from Southeast Asia to South China, which harmed people and animals. Han Yu, an official in Chaozhou, also wrote an article "Sacrificing Crocodiles" for this purpose.

In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the climate became cold, the population increased, the habitat of crocodiles was occupied, and the bay and Hubei were basically out of sight.

Nie Huang only drew it by listening to others tell the story of crocodile fish, and was very happy about it. He thought he finally knew what the crocodile looked like and quickly wrote a hymn for it:

"Crocodiles are spread by words, and its shape is hard to see. Visiting Annan far away is enough to test. 」

And large yellow croaker.

The number of large yellow croaker was very large in Qing Dynasty.

Later, due to the promotion of a childless fishing method "knock", and fishing in spawning grounds and wintering grounds.

Nowadays, there are few wild large yellow croaker, which has been fried to sky-high prices.

Recently, a sky-high menu posted on the Internet caused a heated discussion. Eight people actually ate more than 400 thousand in one meal, and there are some valuable ingredients in the menu, including wild large yellow croaker.

Now look at the praise of stone fish in Nie Huang's Sea Broken Map:

"Sea fish stone, live forever. Famous in the Central Plains, it is everywhere. 」

Full of irony.

Zhang Chenliang said:

"In fact, everyone can make some efforts to protect endangered marine life. For example, the survival of land hermit crabs depends largely on shells on the beach. If all the shells on the beach are picked up by tourists, then they have no "home". You can choose not to pick up shells. 」

Three hundred years ago, folk painter Nie Huang, because of his curiosity about the marine world, explored the bizarre marine life world alone in the era when flowers and birds were the mainstream aesthetics in Qing Dynasty.

Three hundred years later, Zhang Chenliang, a biology lover, followed Nie Huang's footsteps, further made detailed textual research and popular science on the creatures mentioned in the book, corrected and explained the unreliable places, and compiled a book "Notes on the Wrong Map of the Sea", which made it closer to reality and revived the wonderful books of the Qing Dynasty with contemporary natural history.

The ocean is the cradle of life, and all the ancestors of life were born in the ocean. The ocean covering 70% of the earth's surface, from the sea surface to the seabed several thousand meters deep, is home to all kinds of unfamiliar creatures, which need to be explored urgently.

References:

Notes on marine fault map

Notes on the wrong ocean map: an inter-generational dialogue on popular science of marine life