The Lady and the Panda (43 page)

28
“More than ever”
Harkness to Perkins, 1 May 1936.

28
She was, by the time
Harkness to Perkins, 1 June 1936.

28
“Sometimes I think”
Harkness to Perkins, May 1936.

29
From Suez on…“all life”
Harkness to Perkins, 16 June 1936.

29
A whiskey soda
Harkness to Perkins, 15 July 1936.

30
Past oil-supply
W. Robert Moore, “Cosmopolitan Shanghai, Key Seaport of China,”
National Geographic,
Sept. 1932, p. 316.

30
Harkness took in
Ibid., pp. 316–32.

31
Concrete rafts
Amanda Boyden, “Changing Shanghai,”
National Geographic,
Oct. 1937, p. 494.

32
It was thick and heavy
“The Shanghai Boom,”
Fortune,
Jan. 1935. Boyden, “Changing Shanghai,” mentions the smell too.

32
Shanghai possessed
Harriet Sergeant,
Shanghai: Collision Point of Cultures 1918/1939
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1991), p. 2. Professor Sarah Queen changes Sergeant's “
jenao
” to “
rinao.
”

32
It was a test of character
Stella Dong,
Shanghai 1842–1949: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City
(New York: William Morrow, 2000), p. 75. This is the best, most rollicking history of Shanghai ever. It is as exacting in its historical detail as it is vibrant in its storytelling.

32
At least Harkness could
Harkness to Perkins, 16 June 1936.

32
refugees
Marcia Reynders Ristaino,
Port of Last Resort: The Diaspora of Shanghai
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001). In an e-mail to author from author Ristaino: “The first German refugees came in 1933 and included professionals who were able to integrate into Shanghai and other parts of China. They were not a large group, but they were aware of what was happening in Germany. The real flow began after Kristallnacht.… The largest group arrived in 1939, having read the signs of what was to come.” 32
fifty nationalities
Moore, “Cosmopolitan Shanghai,” p. 325.

32
He wasn't averse
Floyd Tangier Smith to Ruth Woodhull Tangier Smith, 22 Apr. 1937, Smith Papers.

33
The conservative old Palace
Boyden, “Changing Shanghai,” pp. 490–91.

33
Harkness was on a budget All About Shanghai: A Standard Guide Book,
with an introduction by H. J. Lethbridge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1935; reprinted 1983), p. 86.

34
a German Jew
Harkness to Perkins, 22 Aug. 1936.

34
Speaking of her youngest suitor
Harkness to Perkins, misdated 12 July 1936, should be 12 Aug. 1936.

34
Among her many new pals
Harkness,
Lady and the Panda,
p. 242.

34
“WHOOPEE!” All About Shanghai,
p. 73.

34
great verandah of the Race Club
Harkness to Perkins, 25 Aug. 1936.

34
a lush, green twelve-acre
Dong,
Shanghai,
p. 30; Boyden, “Changing Shanghai,” p. 507.

34
candy-colored neon signs
Vicki Baum,
Shanghai '37
(1939; Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 359: “lighted up with white, red, green, and blue lights.”

34
At the Chinese clubs
Boyden, “Changing Shanghai,” p. 491.

34
“closed up Shanghai”
Harkness to Perkins, August 1937.

35
Cocktail hour All About Shanghai,
p. 75.

35
“a really entrancing”
Harkness to Perkins, August, 1937.

35
When he had to make trips
Ristaino,
Port of Last Resort,
p. 15;
All About Shanghai,
p. 76; and Pearl S. Buck,
My Several Worlds
(1954; New York, Cardinal Giant Pocket Books, 1956), p. 207. White Russians—czarist loyalists— had started pouring into Shanghai in 1919, defeated in their campaign against the Bolsheviks, or “Reds.” They took advantage of Shanghai's status as an open port, providing sanctuary to stateless people. The downside was
that they received no protections under their nation's extraterritoriality and were, therefore, subject to harsh Chinese law. Without legal privilege, and not speaking English, the language used for business, they were in a tragic situation. Destitute and degraded, they embarrassed fellow westerners by how low they sank in order to survive—the men working shoulder to shoulder with Chinese laborers, or as bodyguards for rich Chinese businessmen and warlords; the women—many famously beautiful blue-eyed blondes—singing or dancing in cabarets, or just as likely turning tricks on the street. Still, most claimed to be descended from royalty, and Keane's girlfriend possessed the legendary transcendent Russian haughtiness. Pearl Buck wrote that the White Russians were arrogant even while begging. Given a handout, they might complain, “Have you no better shoes than this?”

35
“an outlaw's haven”
Dong,
Shanghai,
p. 117.

35
In her letters home
Harkness to Perkins, 25 July 1936.

35
He may very well have been
“War Lords and Dope in Szechuen: Danish Journalist on Life in the Provinces,”
North China Herald,
7 July 1937.

35
The two explored
Ristaino,
Port of Last Resort,
p. 19.

35
“All of China”
Harkness to Perkins, 25 July 1936.

36
Through such wanderings
Dong,
Shanghai,
p. 13.

36
Once only the drug
Ibid., pp. 6–8.

36
feeding frenzy
Sherman Cochran, ed.,
Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial Culture in Shanghai, 1900–1945
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell East Asia Series, 1999), p. 4.

37
It called itself
Zhongguo In conversation with author, Sarah Queen, professor of Chinese history, Connecticut College, 10 Apr. 2003 and 24 Jan. 2004.

37
All strangers were barbarians
Barbara W. Tuchman,
Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–1945
(New York: Grove Press, 1971), p. 26.

37
“to make money” North China Herald,
9 Sept. 1936, p. 466; and Richard Pyke, “Why Shanghai Is Not China,”
Listener,
12 Aug. 1936.

38
In the drenching, one-hundred-degree heat
Harkness to Perkins, 12 Aug. 1936.

38
Some days she would pinch
Harkness to Perkins, 27 Aug. 1936.

38
“ZIANG TAI”
Harkness to Perkins, 27 Aug. 1936.

38
“There is really”
Ibid.

38
“advertising sales”
Moore, “Cosmopolitan Shanghai,” p. 330; and Boyden, “Changing Shanghai,” p. 507.

38
“a great sprawling rambling”
Harkness to Perkins, 25 July 1936.

39
Just down the street
Although many sources talk about the banners on Nanking Road, Boyden, “Changing Shanghai,” says they had mostly disappeared (p. 492).

40
Several blocks west
Boyden, “Changing Shanghai,” p. 493.

40
pidgin English
Dong,
Shanghai,
pp. 32–33. Pidgin English “never allowed for sophisticated discourse,” Dong says.

40
According to the guidebooks All About Shanghai,
pp. 120–21; and Rev. C. E.
Darwent, M.A.,
Shanghai: A Handbook for Travellers and Residents
(Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1920; reprint, Taipei: Ch'Eng Wen, 1973), p. i.

40
Kidnappings too
Ristaino,
Port of Last Resort,
p. 86.

40
Within days of her arrival North China Herald,
29 July 1936 (Lt. Col. Orville M. Johnson jumped on 21 July 1936);
North China Herald,
22 July 1936; and
China Press,
12 Aug. 1936.

41
He and his associate
“Madame Chiang, 105, Chinese Leader's Widow, Dies,”
New York Times,
24 Oct. 2003.

41
When Chiang Kai-shek's
Jonathan D. Spence,
The Search for Modern China
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1990, reprint 1999), pp. 333–34; and Dong,
Shanghai,
p. 182.

41
And by 1930
Dong,
Shanghai,
p. 45.

41
One particularly twisted
Tuchman,
Stilwell,
pp. 107–8.

41
and he once sodomized
Dong,
Shanghai,
p. 125.

41
She wanted to keep fit
Harkness to Perkins, 27 Aug. 1936.

41
“I think I am”
Harkness to Perkins and Anne Pierce, 25 July 1936.

42
“jealous as hell”
Harkness to Perkins, 19 Sept. 1936.

42
Sometimes tucked away China Press,
9 Oct. 1935.

43
He was all too eager
Floyd Tangier Smith to Field Museum, 26 July 1936, Field Museum archives.

43
“He has been here”
Harkness to Perkins, 25 July 1936.

43
Smith was a practiced storyteller
“Zoologist Tells of Perils in Remote Sections of China: Returns After Consorting with Half-Civilized Tribes and Bandit Hordes for Two Years While Collecting Specimens” ran one headline above an Associated Press story in 1932.

43
“It was a long job”
Floyd Tangier Smith, “Collecting a Zoo in China: The Search for the Giant Panda,”
Home and Empire,
Nov. 1937, Smith Papers.

44
“little pile of coppers”
Harkness,
Lady and the Panda,
p. 28.

44
“I divide the whites”
Harkness to Perkins, 30 Sept. 1936.

44
The notion of
This is revealed in all his correspondence about her after her success.

44
“Those who think that the animals”
Smith, “Collecting a Zoo in China,” p. 6.

44
“I don't know how you”
Ruth Harkness, travel club speech, 1939.

45
Even now
Russell to Reynolds, 1 Apr. 1965.

45
Born in Japan in 1882
Catton,
Pandas,
p. 13.

45
Here he wore suits
Smith's résumé, Smith Papers.

46
From 1930 to 1932
Smith's letters to sister.

46
mammals, reptiles, birds
William G. Sheldon,
The Wilderness Home of the Giant Panda
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1975), p. 73. In 1935 the Sage expedition to west China collected 1,150 animals in just six weeks.

46
his desire for a panda
Clipped article came from Smith Papers, with a handwritten note:
China Herald & Examiner,
Dec. 20, '32. Smith to Ruth Woodhull Tangier Smith, 25 June 1931, and 3 Feb. 1932; and 6 Mar. 1932, “I am
highly expectant over what may have been accomplished while I have been away,” he writes, “and even dare to hope that a live panda or takin or two may be eating out of hand when I reach the various present headquarters,” Smith Papers.

46
But the exhausting work
Details of Smith's life in the field from his correspondence with Field Museum, 17 Jan. 1931; Mar., June 23, 1931; 9 Oct. 1931; 27 Nov. 1930; and 6 Mar. 1936, Field Museum archives.

47
In the words
Russell to Reynolds, 1 Apr. 1965.

47
The haggard and luckless China Journal,
Oct. 1934, p. 171.

48
“always just around the corner”
Harkness to Perkins, 25 July 1936.

48
In fact, Smith
Smith correspondence with Field Museum, 6 May and 30 June 1936, Field Museum archives.

48
Smith had faced
Elizabeth Smith to Ruth Woodhull Tangier Smith, 23 Dec. 1936.

48
“I think Ajax is out”
Harkness to Perkins, 25 July 1936; sentiment echoed in letter of 6 Aug. 1936.

48
the diplomatic corps was
Tuchman,
Stilwell,
p. 145.

48
From high in the air
Harkness to Perkins, 27 July 1936.

49
The moment Harkness presented
Information from Harkness to Perkins and Pierce, 25 July 1936, and from Political Graveyard website:
http://www.politicalgraveyard.com
: Nelson Trusler Johnson (1887–1954), Ambassador to China starting 1935.

49
Ambassador Nelson Trusler Johnson
Details about Johnson from Tuchman,
Stilwell,
p. 148.

50
“Now be sure”
Foreign embassies were already beginning to move down to Nanking: “British Envoy to Quit Peiping for Nanking,”
Christian Science Monitor,
3 Aug. 1936.

50
She must have smiled
Tuchman,
Stilwell,
p. 120.

50
Sunlight and the dust
NASA photographs of the phenomenon on 25 Apr. 2001; Associated Press report (6 April 2000) that a million tons of Gobi Desert dust hit Beijing. Also Tuchman,
Stilwell,
p. 65.

50
“A sudden feeling”
Harkness,
Lady and the Panda,
pp. 37–38.

50
“horse, guide, and mentor”
Harkness to Perkins, 6 Aug. 1936.

50
There were the dazzling
Picture in
National Geographic,
Dec. 1936, plate 15.

53
Gerry Russell finally arrived
Harkness to Perkins and Anne Pierce, 25 July 1936.

53
Initially Harkness
Harkness to Perkins, 25 Aug. 1936.

53
A case of dysentery
Harkness to Perkins, 6 Aug. 1936.

53
The illness was
Tuchman,
Stilwell,
p. 192, mentions that the French attaché died of it in the late 1930s.

53
Doubled over
Harkness to Perkins, 6 Aug. 1936. Undated letter from Perkins to Harkness refers to a possible operation. The letter clearly was written after Harkness's Beijing trip. Perkins's return letter from Aug. 1936 refers to the recommendation of “an operation.” See also World Health Organization's fact sheet on dysentery; and
Columbia Encyclopedia,
6th edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).

53
“out of the question”
Harkness to Perkins, 6 Aug. 1936.