The Lady And The Panda: The True Adventures Of The First American Explorer To Bring Back China's Most Exotic Animal (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
I love reading about the exploits of interesting people traversing parts of the world I’ve never seen, and this exuberant biography of a Manhattan dress designer turned international explorer held me rapt with one caveat that I’ll explain at the end. Ruth Harkness did not come from a wealthy, sophisticated family, but with determination, a flair for design, and a savvy intelligence that allowed her to read people Harkness managed to create a cosmopolitan New York City life for herself, even in the midst of the 1930’s Great Depression. She fell in love with then married a rich boy adventurer who hoped to be the first to bring a live panda out of China and into the US. When he died in the process, Harkness surprised all her high fashion, socialite friends by deciding she would be the one to take on his mission.Harkness ended up loving China, especially the wild, rugged, mountainous, densely forested, far western areas where the giant panda makes its home, and it’s thrilling to read about her rough and tumble travels, the variety of local people she spent time with, and the off-the-map exotic places she visited. But Harkness didn’t avoid China’s urban areas entirely. There was plenty of Euro-American drinking and partying when she stopped in international cities like Shanghai to gather the team, funds, and provisions needed for her venture, but unlike many contemporary Westerners she respected the Chinese culture and treated her Chinese expedition guide like a partner, even briefly having a love affair with him. When Harkness successfully brought a baby panda out of China much was made of the fact that though she was “just a woman” she succeeded where many men had failed--so far the men had been shooting pandas and bringing back their pelts. Harkness treated “her” panda with great care, trying to understand its needs and sacrificing her own comforts, but the caveat I mentioned in the first sentence is that it makes me uncomfortable and sad to read about a baby animal being taken from its mother and native habitat to be put in a zoo. Harkness agonized about this too, even releasing back into the wild another panda she captured. Other than that, I totally fell under the spell of this lively, enthusiastically written book. The author had access to a trove of personal letters written by Harkness, and retraced some of Harkness’s journey herself, so while reading it was easy to imagine I was right there, experiencing it all myself.
The story of Ruth Harkness, the American woman who went to China in the 1930s to finish up her late husband's plan to capture a live panda. My gosh, the world is so unfair because I will never have a dinosaur, I will never have a pygmy elephant, and I will never have a baby panda. It is madness how cute her baby pandas were. Harkness's story is genuinely interesting - she was a socialite and a fashionista and perfectly willing to rough it in the wilds of China to snatch a baby panda and the essentially smuggle it out of China. To Croke's credit, she does a decent job of acknowledging the multitude of problems with this scenario without letting it bog down the adventuresome parts of the story. And Harkness herself eventually (well, probably after her first panda ended up as a Field Museum exhibit rather than a resident of the Chicago Zoo) came to a lot of these conclusions and even ended up releasing her final panda back into the wild.One thing that did crack me up is that the author seemed to bend over backwards to explain the DEEP, SPIRITUAL bond Harkness formed with her Chinese guide, Quentin Young. You really don't have to explain much after seeing his picture, he's CRAZY HOT and probably had to beat off the ladies with a stick. Deep, spiritual, whatever.Grade: A-Recommended: To fans of animals, people interested in China -- it's a great snapshot of expat life in China in the 1930s.(2009/37)
What do You think about The Lady And The Panda: The True Adventures Of The First American Explorer To Bring Back China's Most Exotic Animal (2006)?
This one really bothered me a lot. I like memoirs, and this one sounded like it would be fascinating, since the woman managed to bring back a baby panda, alive. She was the first one to do so, and the passion & love she had for the pandas is amazing. But her lifestyle was quite destructive, her choices were also destructive, and I think she changed people's lives not for the better. Very sad story in a lot of ways. I also found it interesting that her young husband who was 35 years old died from lung cancer, ,which had spread. He was a heavy smoker, drank heavily, and it seemed fairly evident that his (and hers!) dissipated lifestyles contributed to their early deaths. One other aspect of this story that was interesting is that the men who travelled with her did their best to diminish the value of her contributions. She funded the trips, she saved the pandas and got them successfully back to the USA, and while it is clear she could not have gotten to the panda habitat without the men, it is also clear that she did some amazing things that no one before her did. Worth reading about the pandas, but not so much the people themselves.
—Kim
The Lady and the Panda is the story of Ruth Harkness, who brought the first giant panda to the United States to live at Brookfield Zoo. Her husband, William, dreamed of being able to capture a live panda to show in a zoological context; however, he died on an expedition of throat cancer. Ruth Harkness picked up where he left off and traveled to China. Against the odds, she procured an infant giant panda. She traveled to China several times after that in hopes of finding another panda, and was successful twice more.Croke does a good job of giving details about Harkness herself along with the other characters, who all seem larger than life. This is a fascinating portrait of a strong and passionate woman, and the bears she loved, drawn almost entirely from primary sources.
—Bethany
"China is a country of unforgettable color, and often, quite unbidden, come vivid pictures to my mind--sometimes it is the golden roofs of the Imperial City in Peking, or again it is the yellow corn on the flat-roofed little stone houses in the country of the Tibetan border land" Ruth HarknessFebruary 19, 1936 William Harvest Harkness, Jr. lay dying in Shanghai, his bohemian, socialite wife, Ruth Harkness was in New York City, totally unaware of what her husband was facing. He had left for China on a quest to bring back a live Panda - at this time in our history folks such as Teddy Roosevelt had journeyed to China to hunt pandas, bringing back only their "trophies" of their hunts - so Harkness' journey was something totally unique at the time.When Ruth learned of her husband's death, she made the decision to embark on the most unusual journey of her time. Leaving her own career in dress design, she traveled to China on the quest of a lifetime - her's and her husband's.There are many obstacles in being a woman traveling in China at any given time, during the 1930's obstacles were even greater. Her quest to bring back a live Panda was filled with many up's and down's, the threat of World War II looming, her lack of understanding the culture and language, yet none of these obstacles prevented Ruth Harkness from completing her husband's "appointed" task.Ruth kept going through all types of conditions, until one day ...............You will just have to read this one for yourself to find out what happened to her expedition.
—Almira
