Free The Lady and the Panda by Vicki Croke Page A

to endure the sight of others, who were bankrolled by museums and academies or could finance their own way, launching lavish expeditions from Shanghai, which were covered by an adoring press.
    In the words of one associate, Smith “lived precariously.” The haggard and luckless adventurer would forever be chasing after the next check, straining to maintain a high profile while an army of Ivy Leagueboys paraded through town. So, now, in the summer of 1936, Smith kept at Harkness, pushing the notion of running an expedition from Shanghai. He could not see that she was repelled by the arrangement he doggedly pursued. For her part, she was rather more astute about him. She saw that for Smith “fame and fortune” were “always just around the corner. The next trip will surely make him wealthy.” In fact, Smith, counting on Harkness's money, had already written to the Field Museum claiming he would be back in action very shortly.
    Smith had faced one disappointment after another, according to his wife. And he would soon reach a breaking point. Harkness would later see clearly what she suspected then: Smith wasn't up to the task.
    Despite all his experience and big talk, Smith would just be a liability. “I think Ajax is out,” she wrote home within a week of her arrival, on July 25. “He is anything but well, and as much of a dear as he is, is totally impractical in many ways, and I cannot afford to take chances of any kind.”
    WITH THAT SETTLED in her mind, Harkness moved forward. On a hot, rainy Sunday, just after dawn, she flew to the American embassy in Beijing, where the diplomatic corps was reluctantly in the process of shifting power over to Nanking, the old Ming capital, now the seat of government under Chiang Kai-shek. Harkness had hatched her own strategy, and teaming with Smith was just one of her husband's mistakes she planned not to repeat. The other was getting tangled in the legendary Chinese bureaucracy that had left Bill languishing in Shanghai for months on end. To conduct a scientific expedition into the Chinese interior, one had to appease many governmental agencies. It was a tedious, capricious, and time-consuming process. That just wasn't for Ruth Harkness.
    From high in the air, on her first flight ever—“and how I adored it!” she reported—she looked down with wonder at the endless miles of lush farmland in “every conceivable shade of green velvet.” The whole country seemed to be a garden segmented into a thousand irregular shapes and sizes. She peered out the window, mulling over what she was about to do.
    She had had a flash of insight into how to circumvent all the predictable problems. She would use the great wall of skepticism that always greeted her to her own advantage. Everyone kept reminding her that she was not a scientist, not a zoologist, just a dress designer. Fine, she thought. If I'm not a scientist, why should I apply for scientific permits? Why outline a collecting blueprint? If she got none of the benefits of a big, sanctioned expedition, why should she be saddled with its strictures?
    She could think of it all quite philosophically, and see it through the prism of yin and yang: in weakness there is the seed of strength. From a position of powerlessness, Ruth Harkness drew power. She turned the dynamic she was presented with on its head. She would not rouse the dragons who guard forms in triplicate. She would tiptoe by them. She would go on record with the embassy about her destination, and she would even mention her silly little panda dream, but she would leave it at that. For Harkness, the fact that it meant breaking the rules wasn't a problem; it was more like an added benefit.
    Once her mind was made up, things happened quickly in Beijing. The moment Harkness presented letters to the legation, she was ushered in to see Ambassador Nelson Trusler Johnson. The portly middleaged official knew a great deal about previous panda hunters, including Bill, whose exploits made