“Journey to Formosa. Unforgotten Heroes. 1875-2014. In the footsteps of the Journey to the Island of the Russian Naval Officer P.I. Ibis» Exhibition is introduced by the Central Naval Museum in cooperation with the Department of Culture of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russian State Navy Archive and Pobeda Development Center.
Background of the Exhibition is broad: in January-February 1875 a student of Saint Petersburg Naval School, warrant officer of the Corps of Fleet Navigators, a member of the world cruise on Askold Corvette, Pavel Ivanovich Ibis (1852–1877) made an unprecedented “ethnographic journey” through Taiwan on his own, as a result he made detailed reports and drawings. After the premature death of the young officer his name was forgotten in Russia for more than one hundred years until M.F. Chigrinsky, an investigator from Saint Petersburg, restored historical justice in the end of 1970’s.
Travelers Fyodor Labutin and Sergey Malkov headed to the South of Taiwan on 3 March 2014 to follow the route of Pavel Ibis: he was in Taiwan in 1875 and walked from the South to the North on foot, as his goal was to study aboriginal inhabitants of Formosa. There is a short-length film which shows the chronicle of a few days of the journey in the Southern Taiwan, which took more than 20 days and finished in Taipei on the 22nd day of March.
Project of “Excursion to Formosa” is intended to repair the honest name of the forgotten Russian traveler Pavel Ibis and to bring him into line with such Russian travelers as Khabarov, Bering and others. Fyodor Labutin hopes to attract attention to the unique page of history of relations between Russia and Taiwan, as well as to promote improvement of the international image of Taiwan.
The exhibition will be open from 15 February till 23 April 2017.
