Ruth Harkness - The Panda Lady

The giant panda was unknown to the Western world as late as 1869 when native hunters brought French missionary Père Armand David a dead specimen. The pelt of this animal was sent to the Museum of Natural History in Paris. The first Westerner to observe a live giant panda in the wild was German zoologist Hugo Weigold, who was part of the 1916 Stoetzner Expedition to China and Tibet. He obtained a panda cub from locals, but the cub did not survive.

On April 13, 1929, two of former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt's sons, Theodore and Kermit Roosevelt, became the first Westerners to hunt and kill a giant panda, as an expedition sponsored by Chicago's Field Museum to western China. This specimen was subsequently stuffed and exhibited at the Field Museum.

It was not until 1937, some sixty-seven years after the panda's discovery by Westerners, that Ruth Harkness and Gerald Russell captured a live giant panda for the first time. During this period twelve well staffed and equipped professional expeditions failed to collect a single live specimen of the giant panda.

Since the discovery of the Giant Panda, the Western public had been clamoring for live specimens that could be kept and viewed in zoos. William Harkness, an independently wealthy gentleman who had captured Komodo dragons in the Dutch East Indies for the New York Bronx Zoo, was determined to bring back a Giant Panda.

In 1934, Harkness married a New York fashion designer named Ruth McCombs after a decade-long friendship. A scant two weeks after the wedding, he left Ruth behind and set off to China as part of a previously planned expedition to bring back a Panda. His party was delayed in Shanghai, and in February 1936 he died, not having fulfilled his goal.

Within days of learning of her husband's death, Ruth decided to complete her husband's quest. From New York, Harkness sailed through the Red Sea and to Ceylon, Singapore and Hong Kong before finally reaching Shanghai.

In Shanghai, Ruth did not hit if off with her husband's partner, Floyd Tangier Smith. Instead, she contacted a well-known American-born Chinese hunter/explorer named Jack Young, who recommended his younger brother Quentin (Yang Tilin) for the job.

Ruth and Quentin hit it off, and got right to work organizing the expedition. Ruth had her husband's sportswear tailored to fit her - even his woolen underwear and hobnail boots! Finally, on the night of September 26, 1936, the Harkness/Young expedition set out from Shanghai on the riverboat Whangpu. Included in Ruth's gear was a small cardboard box containing her husband's ashes, which she would later bury under a great rhododendron in the Mountains of the Immortals

Traveling over 1,500 miles up the Yangtze River, and then some 300 miles overland by foot, Ruth saw sights that few Westerners, let alone Western women, had ever seen. Traveling through valleys and cliffs, camping in the ruins of a Buddhist temple, Ruth found herself happy and at home in China. A Chinese name was given to her, Ha Kan Sse, approximating the sound of her last name. The Chinese meaning of the name, appropriately enough, is Sound of Laughter, Brave, Thought.

On November 9, 1936, she and her party found a three-pound giant panda cub, eyes not yet open, in a hollow tree. They named the cub Su-Lin - Chinese for "something very cute." Ruth had had the foresight to pack baby bottles and milk in the event a young panda was located. Both the expedition members and the Western scientific community mistook the cub for a female.

With cub in hand, the expedition moved quickly to depart. Hiking quickly, they reached the city of Chengdu within a week, and Ruth flew from there to Shanghai with the cub. There was some trouble in Shanghai, however, as Harkness did not have official permits to capture or transport wildlife. On December 2nd, however, Ruth was allowed to board the ocean liner 'President McKinley,' which was headed for San Francisco.

On December 7, 1936, Time magazine recounted the capture, calling it "a scientific prize of first magnitude." Her husband's former partner, Floyd Smith, was less than pleased that someone had beat him in the quest for a panda - let alone a woman. He charged that Ruth had in actuality taken a panda already "reserved" for him. Supposedly his hunters had located the mother some time previously, and had only been waiting for the baby panda to be weaned before moving in for the capture. Although today's panda experts discount this claim, it was a source of irritation to Ruth at the time.

On December 18, 1936, Ruth returned to the U.S. carrying the first live panda onto American soil. Headline writers all over the country went wild - calling society's reaction to the feat "panda-monium."

The adoration of the American public did not help Ruth overcome the chauvinism of the all-male institutions in the field of science and exploration, however. Many institutions snubbed her before the Explorers Club did her the "honor" of being the first women allowed to attend a dinner with the "gentlemen." It should be noted, however, that the Club listed Su-Lin, not Harkness, as their guest of honor for the evening.

There were other problems to be overcome, as well. Ruth had difficulty finding Su-Lin a home, and had to keep him in her Manhattan apartment for some time. The Bronx Zoo, which was supposed to take the panda, declined, saying they did not have adequate housing for her. Additionally, they also accused her of being a "gold digger" by asking for $20,000 in exchange for the panda, which money she planned to use for another expedition to China.

Finally, Su-Lin was sold to Chicago's Brookfield Zoo for $8,750, far less than the amount Ruth had hoped to obtain, but still enough to finance another expedition to China. As "Panda Fever" swept the country, Harkness found another panda - Mei-Mei, supposedly a female. This panda was taken from Chengdu, China, in December 1937 by local hunters and sold to Harkness.

Ruth made a third China trip, where she once again teamed up with Quentin Young. Young had collected two more pandas, one an adult, the other a young female. Neither panda was brought back to the U.S. The adult was shot sometime after capture, supposedly having become uncontrollable, and the young female, Su-Sen, was released as having too wild a temperament to survive in captivity.

Sadly, Su-Lin died in April 1938 after choking on a stick. After its death, zoologists determined that this panda had been a male. Today, Su-Lin can be seen as a mounted exhibit in Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. After Mei-Mei's death in 1942, it was determined that this animal had also, in fact, been a male.

When Ruth returned home from China, she came as a single woman with no private income. Fortunately, the book she had written about her first expedition, 'The Lady and the Panda,' was well received. She ultimately decided, after Su Lin's death in the early 1940's, to travel to South America to study the Incas. She did no work on this project, however, and spent her time with what she called "an elaborate nothing," consisting of cocktails and dinner parties. She subsequently met Sandoval, a Basque/Indian naturalist who served as her guide to his village high in the mountains. Her book 'Pangoan Diary', published in 1942, describes her life in that village.

After publishing 'Pangoan Diary,' nothing more of substance was heard from or about Ruth Harkness. On July 19, 1947, at age 46, Ruth Harkness was found dead in a downtown Pittsburgh hotel. If you visit Union Cemetery in Titusville, PA, you can see her tombstone - erected in 1997, some fifty years after her death. It reads: "The Panda Lady Ruth McCombs Harkness."

"The Lady and the Panda" by Vicki Croke
The Washington Post
March 4, 2001; Page W14
Section: Magazine

CHINA: The Panda Adventure
Presented on the spectacular giant IMAX® screen, CHINA: THE PANDA ADVENTURE is the true story of Ruth Harkness, a fiercely independent woman who travels to the mysterious forests of China to follow in her late husband's footsteps and achieve his dream of bringing the first live Giant Panda to America. Check your local listings!