The Lady and the Panda

by Vicki Croke

  In the meantime, Harkness wanted to come clean with officials about Su-Lin, though without having to forfeit Baby. She was wrestling with that issue, when, on Thanksgiving Day, November 26, she went to the home of a staunch ally who would become one of the most influential figures in her life. Arthur de Carle Sowerby was the dean of foreign naturalists in Shanghai. A prolific writer and field zoologist, with an interest in art, literature, and politics, Sowerby owned, edited, and wrote a good deal of a well-respected monthly magazine called The China Journal. On this day, as his American wife oversaw a big holiday dinner, he must have been filled with joy to sit holding the most sought-after animal in the world.

  The gray-haired naturalist came to know Harkness and the remarkable little animal she had brought to his doorstep. He thought it “eminently fitting” that Harkness had named the panda after Su-Lin Young. Not only was she considered the first and only Chinese woman explorer, but Sowerby knew her personally from her reporting work for his journal. He was thrilled to examine up close the mysterious little panda, who had begun opening his eyes. And, as accomplished as Sowerby was himself, he was very impressed with Harkness, referring to her as “the courageous lady explorer.”

  In the December issue of The China Journal, he would write a long article about her success. “The story of this attractive young American woman's ‘great adventure’ is a thrilling one. In fact, it is an epic in the history of travel and exploration, reflecting the greatest credit upon everybody concerned, including, of course, the heroine herself; her faithful and devoted assistant Quentin Young, youthful Chinese explorer and brother of Jack T. Young.” The concern that was considered insurmountable, Sowerby wrote, was “the problem of feeding it and keeping it alive after it had been captured.” For now, Su-Lin was thriving on Dr. Nance's baby-panda formula.

  The next day was scheduled to be Harkness's last in Shanghai. She would send her luggage ahead during the daylight hours, then board the Empress of Russia at about midnight—settling in overnight for the 7 A.M. departure time on the 28th. There was much to be done, for this was the scheduled press payback day, when Harkness had to honor her pledge to all the patient reporters, and she had to manage it all without Dan Reib, who was suffering from the flu that she had been battling for days. With Reib out of commission, Hardenbrooke stepped in to assist.

  As promised, all the reporters were invited to her hotel room for interviews and pictures. Harkness made a dramatic impression. When the door was thrown open, she stood, fit and slender, in good color from her expedition, wearing a striking purple, embroidered “mandarin gown,” with Tibetan fur boots. As usual, there was the shiny black hair pulled straight back, the deep voice, and the irresistible charm. On this day, no little flu could keep her down. She held court with the flow of eager press, answering questions with aplomb. All the reporters were under her spell.

  Of the expedition, the North China Daily News reporter asked, “Did it cost much?”

  “Everything I had,” the adventurer responded. “But I decided to have a final fling and back my last cent on the million to one chance that the expedition would be a success and that we'd either shoot or capture a panda.”

  She described the adventure as the reporters furiously scribbled down every last detail. The throng wanted to know about the baby panda, who was sleeping in his wicker basket in the corner. Soon enough, as one reporter said, “a queer noise” came from it. Harkness ordered hot water from room service to heat the formula, then brought the squawking baby out. “When the bottle finally arrived, Su-Lin devoured the contents as rapidly as it could suck it out the nipple top,” reported the China Press. Harkness flopped the black-and-white bundle of fur onto her shoulder, going through the motions of burping a baby. All the while flashbulbs went off. She may have reveled in the cheery company of the reporters, but Harkness never mugged for the cameras. She didn't seem the least bit concerned about having an attractive picture taken of herself. Of all the thousands of shots that would be snapped over the next months, very few show much of Harkness's face—that view seemed always reserved for Baby.

  She told them that she owed her success to Quentin Young, and that he had planned the whole trip, with her financing. Sowerby noted her generosity in The China Journal: “Her praise for the way he carried out his part of the programme was unstinted.”

  Later that evening, with the reporters gone and the luggage sent ahead to the ship, Harkness sat down before the fire to a quiet meal with Hardenbrooke.

  At close to midnight, they headed out, taking rickshaws down the Bund, then boarding a tender that would motor passengers to the anchored Empress of Russia. Baby rested in his wicker basket through it all. Rocking gently in the little boat, Harkness felt relieved that she was finally on her way back to the United States.

  But before the launch could depart, Chinese Maritime Customs officials suddenly appeared, asking her if she was Mrs. Harkness, and if she had a panda. When she replied in the affirmative, one of the officials said, “We are sorry to detain you, but you must come with us to the Customs shed. You must bring your panda, too.”

  She had pulled together an expedition in just a few months. She had made it out of Shanghai, past Chongqing, through Chengdu, up a great mountain chain, and back. She had kept the baby alive here in this teeming city. Now, within sight of the great ship she was booked on, everything threatened to go bust.

  Powerless, Harkness and Hardenbrooke lugged the wicker basket between them, following the officials to a two-story customs examination shed across the street from the Customs House. Temperatures in the unheated building dipped into the thirties, and icy gusts cut across the surface of the river. Harkness was stopped, she was told, because she did not have a permit to carry a live animal out of the country. Saturday's edition of The New York Times would explain, “The customs commissioner of Shanghai had issued special instructions to inspectors to be on the lookout for the tiny animal. They detained it on the grounds that certain necessary formalities had not been complied with.” The Times called this “a technical charge.”

  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, rep
orted 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.