The Girl Who Loved Red-crowned Cranes #1 – Mosaïcultures Internationales de Montréal, Botanical Garden, Montréal, Québec

The entry of the city of Shanghai, China in the 2013 Mosaïcultures Internationales competition illustrates the story of a girl who loved Red-crowned Cranes. The red-crowned crane (Grus japonensis) is an endangered species and, contrary to what its Latin name implies, is not found solely in Japan. This stunningly graceful bird with a bright red crown winters in China and Korea, and is also found in Siberia and on Hokkaido Island, at the northern end of the Japanese archipelago. In some parts of its range, it is known as a symbol of luck, longevity and fidelity.

Red-crowned cranes are gregarious animals that live in flocks. Early each spring, before the nesting season, they engage in a very unique ballet: a mating dance in which the potential partners combine jumps, bows, greetings and flapping of wings with other carefully calculated movements.

Xu Xiu Juan was born in a city in northern China. From her earliest childhood she had loved red-crowned cranes. After graduating from university in the 1980s, she traveled very far – to the Yangcheng Nature Reserve on the coast of central China – to care for these birds. But one day, when she tried to save an injured crane, she slipped into a swamp. The crane was saved but Xu Xiu Juan never came up again to the surface.

The moving story of this girl, told far and wide across the breadth of China, has touched the hearts of thousands of people. To pay tribute to the wonderful spirit of the girl who saved the crane but lost her own life, a song has been composed to tell this story. The song’s title is "A True Story."