The Lady and the Panda (22 page)

Harkness was nearly hysterical with frustration. Her friends in Shanghai, she would write later, never knew that such a permit was necessary. They wondered now if the complaint was manufactured as a means of detaining her. Some influential people had gone to bat for her, dealing with government authorities behind the scenes. Everything should have been taken care of, and what this new wrinkle was, no one knew. Grabbing the shed's telephone, Hardenbrooke dialed Dan Reib.

As other calls went out, two influential American reporters appeared on the scene—Victor Keane and most likely Hallett Abend. Her flu raging, exhausted from lack of sleep and in a state of panic, Harkness began to cry. Things would not be squared in time for her to leave with the
Empress of Russia,
so her luggage was salvaged from it. Officials told the American they would write out a receipt for the panda, who would remain in the shed while she returned to the hotel. How preposterous. She wouldn't consider it. She said she would just have to spend the night, and using a borrowed pillow, she promptly stretched out on a cold countertop.

At the first light of day, having hardly slept, she drank a cup of steaming tea snagged from a street vendor, then spread open the local papers that had just hit the stands.

GIANT PANDA CAUGHT ALIVE
, screamed the headline in the
North China Daily News.
“They said she couldn't do it. She wasn't an explorer. She was a woman. Her field was dress designing. Besides, who ever heard of a Panda being captured alive,” the first paragraph read.

AMERICAN WOMAN LEAVES WITH ONLY GIANT PANDA IN CAPTIVITY: MRS. HARKNESS CAUGHT BABY IN SZECHWAN, HAS NURSED RARE LITTLE BEAST IN SHANGHAI UNTIL SHIP BOARDED LAST NIGHT
, ran the front-page headline in the
China Press.
The story was at the top of the page, front and center, with two large photos taken in Harkness's hotel room. Its lead, written by the enterprising Woo Kyatang, was no less momentous. “The futile search conducted during the past half a century by scientists, and explorers for a live giant panda, reported to be the rarest, most elusive and high-priced animal of the world, was being crowned with success in Shanghai this morning when a five-week-old specimen, carrying the distinction of being the first of its kind ever to be held in captivity, left here for the United States on board the Empress of Russia.”

“This valuable find brought to a successful conclusion one of the longest searches ever conducted by man for a rare animal,” one awestruck reporter would write.

Harkness and Su-Lin were such big news that they had trumped a front-page staple—the romance between the king of England and the American divorcée Wallis Simpson.

The fame was cold comfort to Harkness that Saturday morning, though. While she and all of Shanghai read of her departure aboard the
Empress of Russia,
she was in fact stewing in the customs shed, her flu worse than ever.

Floyd James made his way down to babysit Su-Lin, allowing Harkness to return to the hotel. Dan Reib, roused out of his own sickbed, posted what
The New York Times
reported as the “heavy cash bond” the commissioner required, then he and all of Harkness's other friends swung into action. The people she knew were powerful enough that within hours a tentative settlement had been brokered. But there would be many more ups and downs, twists and turns ahead. Over the next few days, the papers breathlessly recorded every detail they could uncover in the ever-changing story, one that symbolized the chafing forces of Western power and the emerging Chinese national pride.

Before noon, Mrs. Sowerby came by in her car to pick up Harkness
and the newly released panda, ferrying them over to the Palace, where a conference of Harkness supporters was convening.

By the afternoon, Harkness once again greeted the newsmen. The
China Press
would report that the panda was fine, despite his cod liver oil being misplaced. Harkness, however, was showing the effects of the harrowing ordeal at the customs shed, and seemed quite ill.

Ruth Harkness, surrounded by cigarettes, bottles, glasses, and crumpled handkerchiefs, ready to meet the press in her room at the Palace Hotel.
COURTESY MARY LOBISCO

Harkness's insistence on keeping the baby panda close to her at all times was crucial to his survival—later studies would show that panda mothers might not put the baby down for a moment during its first month—but now, in all the drama, something else became clear. Su-Lin had also stirred a fierce maternal love in the young widow. The thought of Baby being taken away had shaken her deeply.

On Sunday two New York papers—the
American
and
The Times
— were calling Saturday's alleged deal between Harkness supporters and
Chinese officials a victory:
MRS. HARKNESS WINS FIGHT FOR BABY PANDA'S PASSPORT AND MRS. HARKNESS TAKES RARE PANDA TO HOTEL; RELEASE OF ANIMAL BY CHINA IS HELD CERTAIN
, ran the headlines. “High Customs officials,”
The New York Times
reported now, were “adopting a helpful view.”

In Shanghai, where the local newspapers still used carrier pigeons to send dispatches across town, every tidbit learned about Harkness was printed. The
North China Daily News
even ran an old photo of her meeting Lady Hosie and “Miss Jepshon” in Guanxian weeks before. The
China Press
was told by its sources inside the government that Harkness would be detained only about a week, and that she would be allowed to sail for the United States aboard the
President McKinley
on Wednesday, December 2. All she had to do was obtain a wellness certificate for SuLin and then pay a fee amounting to 7½ percent of the value of the animal (judged to be two thousand dollars Mexican, the currency in use), which came to less than fifty dollars in American money.

In reality, the difficulty was not so settled. The clout of Harkness's friends was being well matched by large forces at work in the country. First, officials at the Academia Sinica, who had been ignored by Harkness previously, felt offended, with their fury feeding on something beyond any petty bureaucratic insult. There was a rising sense of indignation from those who were tired of watching their country being looted by westerners. They saw this latest affair as nothing more than scientific imperialism. These kinds of anti-Western feelings were becoming a “smouldering fury” in “Chinese hearts,” according to Pearl Buck.

Westerners perceived the considerable, and more than justified, nationalistic pride as Chinese truculence: “The only danger of further delay,”
The New York Times
wrote, “is seen in the possibility that certain organizations that object to foreign exploration in China and that attempt to prevent shipments abroad of unusual finds made in the country may oppose the panda's going abroad. Such organizations have previously hampered Roy Chapman Andrews and others. They prevented the late William Harkness from hunting the panda and held up his expedition for thirteen months until he died here.”

Americans felt the Chinese weren't capable of taking care of their
own treasures.
The New York Times
was one of many charging that “China lacks facilities and wild animal experts for keeping this rare specimen alive.” There was no institution in China, Sowerby argued, “equipped to rear such a difficult animal to keep alive. The only hope of realizing the full results of the wonderful achievement of Mrs. Harkness is that the panda should reach New York alive and pass into the hands of those properly equipped and qualified to nurse it through infancy to maturity.”

Though Americans used these justifications in Harkness's defense, she herself couldn't help seeing the Chinese point of view. While she never wanted to give up Su-Lin, she would always feel compelled to “repay” China for the loss of the rare animal.

She certainly felt that press reports of Su-Lin's skyrocketing value were not helping her cause. The
China Press
had placed a price tag of twenty-five thousand dollars on the panda, dubbing him “the most valuable animal in the world.” Sowerby, her ally, refuted this figure publicly, saying that a more reasonable estimate would be five to ten thousand dollars. The
China Press
held fast to the figure no matter what Harkness or anyone else said, even gleefully reporting that the panda hunter was “indignant about” it. In fact, she hated any stories on her quest that focused on the financial angle. She had not launched the expedition to get rich, she said over and over again. She had sunk every penny into the venture with little hope of seeing any return. Her real wish now was that as a proven explorer, she would be able to attract funding for further expeditions to China as easily as some of her peers. She told the press that she wanted to conduct a thorough canvassing of the area in which SuLin had been captured to better understand the wildlife of the China/ Tibet border.

Back in her hotel room, with the storm still raging around her, Harkness figured that as long as she was stuck for a while, she might as well call Smith. She had been selective about whom she spoke with during her secretive weeks in Shanghai. But now that the panda was out of the bag, she rang up the old boy whom she probably considered neither
friend nor foe, inviting him to visit. What harm could he do? Their meeting would be brief and cordial, and surrounded by other guests, she would lay out for him the details of the route she had traveled.

On Monday, November 30, what the
China Press
would come to call “the battle royal” was on again. The bumpy and bleak negotiations with customs resumed.

On Tuesday, Harkness was still front-page news, with the betting now going against her.
SCIENCE BODY OFFICIAL DOUBTS PANDA CAN GO AND PANDA MAY NOT BE ALLOWED TO SAIL
, reported two of Shanghai's leading English-language newspapers. A world away, New Yorkers read in
The Times
that
CHINA STILL HOLDS PANDA: MRS. HARKNESS MAY BE THWARTED IN EFFORT TO BRING ANIMAL HERE
. As Harkness would later remember, “One day the papers said that I'd be allowed to leave; the next day, there was no hope. I didn't know myself.”

The Times
reported that without the consent of the Academia Sinica, the very agency Harkness had so gingerly skirted, Su-Lin would go nowhere. Its reporter heard that “Article XXII of China's hunting laws” was “likely” to be invoked. The paper explained that the rule “declares that if an animal is captured or killed without a proper permit it becomes the property of the national treasury.” As the highest scientific research organization in the government, the Academia Sinica continued to take Harkness's affront quite seriously. A spokesman told the
China Press
that Harkness had still not applied for an export permit, and until that was granted, the customs officials would be required to prohibit the panda from leaving the country. There were persistent echoes of doubt from other high-placed sources inside the government too.

A breakthrough came by noon on Tuesday, when Harkness learned she would be able to sail on the
President McKinley
the very next day.
The New York Times
reported that against the objections of many Chinese organizations, “high government officials” insisted on granting the necessary permits.
Time
magazine said that “huffy officials consented to let her take her rare prize home.” It's hard to know what happened exactly, since Harkness would always be vague about these few days in Shanghai.
Much later she would tell an American reporter that a young aide to Chiang Kai-shek had been among the most instrumental in securing her permits.

The cheers from the Western corner went up immediately. Sowerby praised the relenting Chinese government. “We cannot help admiring the action of the authorities in adopting this wise course, for there can be no doubt whatever that, by getting the young panda alive to such a well-equipped institution for caring for and rearing it to adulthood as the Bronx Zoo, the interests of science will best have been served.” Of course, this was the same Bronx Zoo that had trouble—as did all zoos— keeping some exotic animals such as gorillas alive for more than a few months at a stretch. It would know as little as anyone else about keeping giant pandas in captivity.

So far, Su-Lin's miraculous survival wasn't due to any scientific organization anyway, but rather to Harkness's instincts. In holding the baby close to her, in striking on a good formula, and in massaging SuLin's belly to aid in digestion, Harkness was often intuitively mimicking a mother giant panda, long before those secrets were known to zoologists.

Her friends had been powerful enough to button down the glowering Academia Sinica, but her success and its aftermath would bring her enemies. Overruled bureaucrats accustomed to having their way were now determined to regain face. The fastest route would be to bear down on other foreign explorers.
The New York Times
reported that although Harkness was getting out with the panda, it was expected that “the result will be a tightening of all the restrictions against scientific and exploring expeditions now in the field, and future expeditions will find it extremely difficult to obtain satisfactory permits or agreements.” That outcome couldn't have done much to endear Harkness to the exploring community she had just thrashed so soundly.