The Lady and the Panda (45 page)

78
Independent provincial leaders
Tuchman,
Stilwell,
p. 121.

78
spawning discord and bloodshed
Roberts,
Concise History,
pp. 234, 235.

78
Students could gather
Tuchman,
Stilwell,
pp. 146, 151.

78
burying people alive
Boye Lafayette De Mente,
The Chinese Have a Word for It
(Chicago: NTC, 1996), p. 118.

78
or beheading them
photo of severed heads of outlaws posted on Nanking billboard,
National Geographic,
June 1927, p. 709.

78
One of the most important events
Spence,
Search for Modern China,
p. A58.

78
“in a very short time”
Roberts,
Concise History,
p. 226.

79
“I was told”
Harkness, “How I Caught the Rare Giant Panda,” part 2.

81
Well after midnight
Harkness to Perkins, 30 Sept. 1936.

81
Taking a drag
Dong,
Shanghai 1842–1949
, p. 10.

81
It was September 27 North China Daily News,
27 Sept. 36, “Passengers.”

81
The steamer
Whangpu Deidre Chetham,
Before the Deluge: The Vanishing World of the Yangtze's Three Gorges
(New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002).

82
“dear, dear Perkie”
Harkness,
Lady and the Panda
, p. 238. Harkness expresses the sentiment in very similar terms in a letter to Perkins, 19 Sept. 1936.

82
The transformation startled
Harkness to Perkins, 7 Sept. 1936.

82
including Gerry Russell
Harkness to Perkins and others, 17 Oct. 1936.

82
Elizabeth and Floyd Tangier Smith
Elizabeth Smith to Ruth Woodhull Tangier Smith, 8 Dec. 1936, Smith Papers, Library of Congress.

82
In Shanghai, the trendsetting
Boyden, “Changing Shanghai,”
National Geographic,
Oct. 1937, p. 491.

82
Undoubtedly, Chen's powerful parents
Kiefer,
Chasing the Panda
, p. 67.

83
“First class accommodations”
Details of boat trip from Harkness to Perkins, 30 Sept. 1936.

84
“Shop after shop”
Harkness to Perkins, 30 Sept. 1936.

85
One of the panda hunters
Dean Sage, Jr., “In Quest of the Giant Panda: An Account Describing the Work of the Sage West China Expedition in the Highlands of Szechwan Province, Near the Borders of Tibet,”
Natural History,
Apr. 1935.

85
Here, in the half-light
Harkness to Perkins, 19 Sept. 1936.

85
“I wonder when”
Harkness to Perkins, 27 Sept. 1936.

86
The 150-mile
Sage, “In Quest.” 86
“He seems to have”
Ruth Harkness,
The Baby Giant Panda
(New York: Carrick & Evans, 1938), p. 19.

86
expedition's finances
Harkness,
Lady and the Panda,
p. 83.

87
He had taken this expedition North China Daily News,
28 Nov. 1936.

87
She never could have fit in
Sheldon,
Wilderness Home
, pp. 147–49.

87
Young was managing
Tuchman,
Stilwell
, p. 197.

87
Aggressively jostling…“of the open sewage”
Harkness to Perkins and others, 12 Oct. 1936.

88
Half the people in China
Tuchman,
Stilwell,
p. 147.

88
“When I see”
Harkness to Perkins, 13 Oct. 1936; and Tuchman,
Stilwell,
p. 144, corroborates the impression.

88
Then word came in
Harkness,
Lady and the Panda,
p. 93.

88
Rather than sailing to America
Floyd Tangier Smith, letter to the editor,
North China Daily News,
7 Dec. 1936. In this letter, Smith says Russell left one day after Harkness, even though he has her departure date as 23 Sept., when it was actually the 27th; still, Harkness confirms in her letters that Russell left the day after.

88
“He is trying” … “wring his redheaded neck”
Harkness to Perkins and others, 12 and 17 Oct. 1936.

89
The more she thought about it
Harkness to Perkins, 17 Oct. 1936.

89
What she didn't know China Journal,
Apr. 1937.

89
Reib had arranged
Harkness as told to Adamson, “How I Caught the Rare Giant Panda,” part 1, “Led by Tibetan, Mrs. Harkness Finds Prize in Frigid Wilds,”
New York American,
14 Feb. 1937; and Tuchman,
Stilwell,
p. 77. Tuchman verifies “the habitual Chinese failure to keep roads in repair.”

89
Completely protected
Ross Terrill, “Sichuan: Where China Changes Course,”
National Geographic,
Sept. 1985, says 40 feet wide, p. 287.

89
At the very frontier
Chengdu history from
Nagel's Encyclopedia Guide: China
(Geneva: Nagel, 1979), p. 1262; Jeannette L. Faurot,
Ancient Chengdu
(San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center Publications, 1992), pp. 4, 118. Once nearly destroyed by Mongol hordes under the rule of Kublai Khan, Chengdu received the great Marco Polo, who walked streets that even in the thirteenth century were covered in paving stones.

89
It was a sprawling walled
Harkness,
Baby Giant Panda,
p. 44.

90
Behind the grand front gate
Details about Cavaliere from Harkness to Perkins, 17 Oct. 1936; and Harkness,
Lady and the Panda,
p. 136.

90
At seven o'clock
Harkness to Perkins, 17 Oct. 1936.

91
Pilots, explorers North China Herald,
29 July 1936.

91
In this wilderness outpost
Harkness to Perkins, 17 Oct. 1936.

91
Harkness discovered
Harkness to Perkins and others, 17 Oct. 1936.

91
the CNAC kept him
W. Langhorne Bond,
Wings for an Embattled China,
ed. James E. Ellis (Bethlehem, Penn.: Lehigh University Press, 2001).

91
Kay had settled
Harkness to Perkins and others, 17 Oct. 1936. Her chambers included an opulent bathroom, though this being Chengdu, the taps on the tub were purely ornamental, with hot water having to be carted in by the servants.

91
He provided
Harkness to Perkins, 17 Oct. 1936.

92
The mountain chain
Abend, “Rare 4-Pound ‘Giant’ Panda.” Also this is what botanist Wilson says, as well as
China Journal,
Apr. 1937, which simply calls them a “mass of high mountains, by no means all of which have been explored,” p. 189.

92
The mountains of Tibet
Hopkirk,
Trespassers
, p. 5.

92
The Chinese had marveled
Terrill, “Sichuan,” p. 302.

92
Even where the mountains
Hopkirk,
Trespassers,
pp. 6, 232.

92
A no-man's-land
Simon Winchester,
The River at the Center of the World
(New York: Henry Holt, 1996), p. 363.

92
beyond the reach of law
Faurot,
Ancient Chengdu.
In his double-volume set,
A Naturalist in Western China,
botanist E. H. Wilson reported that the entire region was “practically uncharted and unsurveyed.” It was impossible to delineate “with any approach to accuracy, the political boundary between Szechuan and Thibet,” he said. “Indeed, no actual frontier has ever been agreed upon.” The only fair description, Wilson concluded, was to call it the “Chino-Thibetan Borderland.”

92
Panda hunter Dean Sage
Sage, Jr., “In Quest,” pp. 312–17.

93
Even Western climbers
Orville Schell,
Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas to Hollywood
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000), pp. 238–39, 190, 235–36.

93
While in this state
Joseph F. Rock, “Sungmas, the Living Oracles of the Tibetan Church,”
National Geographic,
Oct. 1935, pp. 475–85; and Melvyn C. Goldstein,
A History of Modern Tibet, 1913–1951
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 140–41, fn. 8.

94
“a beautiful forgotten world”
Abend, “Rare 4-Pound ‘Giant’ Panda.”

94
Wang Whai Hsin
Full name from the back of a photograph from the Ruth Harkness family archives. Shows Wang at the end of the second expedition and reads: “Wang Whai Hsin my one servant.”

94
He agreed with
Schaller,
Last Panda
, pp. 130, 132; Harkness,
Lady and the Panda,
pp. 55, 56; and Roosevelt and Roosevelt,
Trailing the Giant Panda
, endmap.

94
The only road
Harkness to Perkins, 17 Oct. 1936.

94
That was where Floyd Tangier Smith
Sheldon,
Wilderness Home,
p. 32.

95
Throughout this time, Cavaliere threw
Harkness to Perkins, n.d., Oct. 1936.

95
This one included
Harkness to Perkins, 21 Oct. 1936, and second letter marked “later same evening.”

95
The
China Press
had reported
“Lolo Chiefs Interested in Gen. Chiang: Jack Young Says Tribe Heads Believe Generalissimo Old, Wise,”
China Press,
18 Aug. 1936.

95
Wearily, Cavaliere
Harkness, “How I Caught the Rare Giant Panda,” part 1.

96
a ragtag caravan
Ibid.

96
blue cotton expedition suit
Harkness,
Lady and the Panda,
p. 113.

96
densest rural populations Lonely Planet: China
(Australia: Lonely Planet, 1994), p. 796.

96
Harkness, like many foreigners
Hahn,
China to Me,
p. 118. Hahn remembered with horror the sight of her chair coolies in Sichuan. “They breathed in loud, stertorous gasps before we were halfway up to the first zigzag in the road,” she wrote. “I saw how their shoulders had been warped into great lumps from the carrying poles, and their legs looked foreshortened and squashed with all their muscles, from being pressed downward.”

97
These unhappy souls
Spence,
Search for Modern China,
p. 382.

97
What it took to survive
Dong,
Shanghai,
p. 162.

97
swaggering strong man
Harkness,
Lady and the Panda,
pp. 130–31.

98
If she were in their situation
Harkness to Perkins, n.d., Oct. 1936.

98
“Last night's Inn”
Harkness to Perkins, 21 Oct. 1936.

100
bandit gangs as large as armies
Dong,
Shanghai,
p. 116.

101
Up a ladder
Harkness, “How I Caught the Rare Giant Panda,” confirms two days to Guanxian.

101
It was Campbell
Harkness, “How I Caught the Rare Giant Panda,” part 2.

105
As Harkness traveled
Smith, letter/document, 12 Oct. 1937, Floyd Tangier Smith Papers, Library of Congress. It is unclear whether Russell was near Harkness in the field and reporting information back in letters, or if Russell merely brought Smith up to date when he returned to Shanghai.

105
Beyond field-intelligence
Russell to Reynolds, 1 Apr. 1965. Russell states of Harkness and the capture of her panda: “What actually occurred 15 miles from Chaopo I do not know as I was in another area.” And
China Journal,
Apr. 1937, places him at the Tibetan border, in “Wassu country” in Sikong.

105
if he had been up to it
Elizabeth Smith to Ruth Woodhull Tangier Smith, 23 Dec. 1936, Smith Papers. She says all this took place two months before the letter.

105
Unaware of any espionage
Harkness as told to Adamson, “How I Caught the Rare Giant Panda,” part 1, “Led by Tibetan, Mrs. Harkness Finds Prize in Frigid Wilds,”
New York American,
14 Feb. 1937.

106
Overjoyed that
Details of soldier incident from Ibid.

106
Cavaliere really would
Harkness to Perkins, 17 Oct. 1936.

106
They shared cigarettes
Ruth Harkness, “In a Tibetan Lamasery,”
Gourmet,
Mar. 1944, p. 57.

107
Somehow a handful
Harkness:
Baby Giant Panda
, pp. 35–36.

107
She once used chopsticks
Harkness to Perkins, 17 Oct. 1936.

108
His impulse proved
Harkness,
Lady and the Panda
, p. 137.

108
It sat at the foot
Author's observation, 29 Oct. 2002.

108
The enchanted hamlet
Ibid.; and Sheldon,
Wilderness Home
, p. 24.

108
Their odd, semiautonomous
Dr. Ming-ke Wang, Institute of History and Philology at the Academia Sinica, e-mail correspondence between Professor Sarah Queen (Connecticut College) and Dr. Ming-ke Wang, 17 Dec. 2002; Schaller,
Last Panda
, p. 132; Catton,
Pandas,
p. 16.

108
The royal men
Sheldon,
Wilderness Home,
p. 22.

108
Wenchuan, it turned out
Harkness, “How I Caught the Rare Giant Panda,” part 1.

109
But the military men
Abend, “Rare 4-Pound ‘Giant’ Panda.”

110
“when you yourself are right”
Lin Yutang,
Moment in Peking
(New York: John Day, 1939), p. 7.

110
Saluting her back
Abend, “Rare 4-Pound ‘Giant’ Panda.”

111
He was the headman
Details from Harkness as told to Adamson, “How I Caught the Rare Giant Panda,” part 2, “Mrs. Harkness' Thrilling Story of Her Hunt in Asian Wilds,”
New York American,
21 Feb. 1937.

112
“a perpetual twilight”
Abend, “Rare 4-Pound ‘Giant’ Panda.”

112
New droppings
Schaller,
Last Panda,
p. 4.