A visit to China means a visit to Mr Zhu Jifu in Shenyang. By car it is a long and expensive trip. By train it was uncomfortable and only the first trip to Shenyang by train was adventurous and exciting. It took us a couple of days to reach Shenyang from Beijing. Nowadays there is a super fast luxury train that take you from Beijing to Shenyang in a couple of hours at an average speed of more than 200 km/h. This means we can return in the late afternoon, something that was not possible in the past.
A visit to Mr Zhu always starts off in one of Shenyang's top restaurants. The food style is different to what you find in Beijing and I find the Shenyang food very tasty. We are accompanied by Mr Zhu's lovely wife. Both look many years younger than their real age. Mr Zhu is a clivia veteran, someone that changed and dominated the Chinese clivia scene for many years. First he played a major role in the design of the clivia glass houses so that clivia can be grown to optimum perfection. Secondly he started to change the look and form of clivia to be a spectacular colourful plant that can be enjoyed and appreciated any time of the year.
Mr Zhu started off his clivia career with the purchase of a 14 cm broad leaf Japanese Daruma he purchased for 40 000 RMB. That time it was a fortune, many times the yearly salary of a top income earner in China. Maybe his family and friends thought he had gone crazy. But he had a plan. He purchased variegated long leaf clivia and pollinated it with the pollen of the broad leaf Daruma. Through careful selection he pollinated the best off spring with each other for a couple of generations to develop the first variegated broad leaf Daruma. He quickly become a plant breeding phenomenon in China with his successes. He and his plants appeared numerous times on China National TV as well as many magazines and local TV stations.
His next step was to class the different types of clivias. This was necessary to reduce arguments and fights in the clivia industry. And again Mr Zhu played a leading role with the writing of " Appreciation of Clivia" Appreciation of Clivia is a guide to select and judge clivia and is still in use to-day to judge clivias in China.
When everyone thought Mr Zhu has done everything, he surprised everyone once again with the development of a miniature clivia called Sparrow. The leaves of this plant is as wide as it is long with an impossible leaf length to leaf width ratio of 1:1! In the early years these plants fetch 100 000 RMB each as three year old seedlings. In 2006 Mr Zhu gave me four two year old seedlings as a gift! Luckily they all survived the long trip back to South Africa and they are still my favourites.
In October 2006 I mailed Mr Zhu a selection of off sets and seedlings from Beijing. One of the plants mailed was an Oorlogskloof mirabilis seedling I purchased from Kirstenbosch. When I visited Mr Zhu in 2004 I told him about the discovery of a new type of clivia and he become very interested in it when I showed him a couple of photos of clivia mirabilis. When we arrived in Shenyang a few weeks later we discovered the bad news. All the plants that I mailed to Mr Zhu were black, because they all froze on their way to Shenyang, despite mailing them through a courier company. Although we were all sad and disappointed what happened I will never forgot Mr Zhu's words: "These plants traveled too far to die in China" My plan was to replace the plants the following year, but I soon discovered that it will be unnecessary to do so.
Less than 6 years later while enjoying lunch together, Mr Zhu asked us to make a decision. Do we want to visit the Shenyang Clivia Show or do we want to see his clivia mirabilis in flower. Well I never thought it will be possible as the biggest of my mirabilis seedlings has not shown any sign of flowering. Without hesitation we decided to visit Mr Zhu's glass houses. When I entered the glass house I immediately saw the clivia mirabilis in flower. I was in for a second shock. Why was the flower colour a blush yellow, whereas the Oorlogskloof mirabilis is famous for its dark red flowers. This despite being exposed to full sunlight with no shading. I later discovered that the light intensity which is not so strong in the Northern Hemisphere plays a major role in the colour intensity of clivia mirabilis flowers.
The next step was to take photos as this was a first for China - the first Clivia Mirabilis to flower in China - and another first by Mr Zhu. We looked around in the glass houses to see the other plants. I see many of the plants I exchanged or gave him as gifts. We also see very vigorous hybrid seedlings of what can be mirabilis or nobilis hybrids or both as I gave Mr Zhu on several occasions mirabilis pollen - see photo after the nobilis photo. As with previous visits Mr Zhu asked me to take any plant I like in his glass house as a gift. I look careful not take his very best plant and opt for a variegated sparrow clivia. Before I can thank Mr Zhu for the wonderful gift, his wife brings me the offset of the best looking variegated sparrow clivia - it is the one where I hold my hand under the leaf of the mother plant. This offset is extremely vigorous and has become a fully grown plant in less than a year.
It is with sadness that I have to report to you that Mr Zhu sold his clivia collection after our last visit to him, because of poor health. Although he might not breed new clivias in the future, he inspired many of us to do the impossible. The mirabilis almost died in the hands of its new owner and was resold to Mr Zhang of Beijing, a famous clivia collector, author and property developer. Luckily I know Mr Zhang for many years and might see the mirabilis in flower again - hopefully next year after Spring Festival.
Over a period of more than 10 years I acquired between 2500 and 3000 plants from Mr Zhu. Many of them Mr Zhu and his wife gave to me and Tracy as presents. I would never have afforded to buy all these plants, especially the more expensive ones. Over many years I also sold seed of Mr Zhu's best plants to clivia enthusiasts from all over the world. Many of these seedlings won first prizes at clivia shows in South Africa. I am particular exciting what the offspring of two Zhu Jifu clivia I pollinated last year of a friend will look like. Both are award winning clivias and both are of exceptionally high quality - even when you compare them with the best in China.
I have noticed that I get a small % of miniatures from my Zhu Jifu Daruma Collection. My miniatures will most probably never flower. After 10 years I have given up hope. This means there is a miniature or dwarf gene in his plants and this has not been fully exploited by Mr Zhu. Mr Zhu bred miniatures by pollinating two selected plants. From these two plants he obtained a much higher than normal % of miniatures. You need more luck than anything else, but it looks like luck was always on the side of Mr Zhu Jifu.
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