Bougainvillea——Tan Lijie Solo Exhibition

History

1766, in the Age of Exploration, France conducted its first voyage around the world. Philibert Commerçon, an accompanying botanist of the voyage, found a plant in Rio de Janeiro, South America, which he named after the surname of Louis Antoine de Bougainville, an admiral on board, and this is the origin of the scientific name of the Bougainvillea plant.

Later, it became known that the first person to observe and discover this plant was actually the botanist’s female entourage, who disguised herself as a male. She was a figure that had almost faded out of history: Jeanne Baret, a female botanist and the first woman to circumnavigate the globe.

The plant was introduced to China in 1872 by George Leslie Mackay, a Scottish-Canadian missionary from North America.

In 1979, Bao’an, a county on the southern coast of China, was officially renamed as Shenzhen. In the following year, Shenzhen was set as a special economic zone. Two years later, the border control line (the Second-Line) was established, and a barbwire fence cut through this new city.

In 1986, Bougainvillea was designated as the city flower of Shenzhen.