Ruth Harkness is an American fashion designer. She became famous for stealing giant pandas out of China twice, and she was also the first Westerner to bring live pandas out of China.
(Ruth Harkness)
Historical reviews of Ruth have been mixed. From the perspective of Chinese, Ruth's act of capturing and transferring national treasures without permission is no different from that of a poacher, and she does not deserve any praise. However, from the American point of view, Ruth ventured to bring back pandas from China, satisfying the American people's curiosity about the Eastern world and opening their eyes. For this reason, she is also known as "Lady Panda" by Americans.
In fact, Ruth was just an ordinary American woman who would have lived an ordinary life. But then an accident eventually put her on the path of poaching pandas.
Ruth's husband, Bill Harkness, was an avid adventurer. Bill doesn't like hunting in general, believing that "real hunting is to bring the prey back alive."
In 1934, just two weeks after his marriage to Ruth, Bill went to China alone. He plans to hunt China's giant pandas back to the United States.
However, a year and a half later, Bill not only did not find the giant panda, but suddenly fell ill and died in Shanghai.
Ruth, who heard the news, was deeply saddened, and in order to fulfill her husband's unfulfilled wish, she came to China alone.
Upon arriving in China, Ruth quickly organized an expedition. Among its members was the famous Chinese explorer Yang Dide. Yang Dide held the world record for human mountaineering for many years, and he also tracked down the first complete giant panda specimen in 1929.
With the help of Yang Dideze, Ruth and her party followed the Yangtze River upstream. Two months later, it arrived in Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province. In the days that followed, the crowd began to search for traces of pandas in the damp bamboo forest, but found nothing.
I don't know how long it took for the expedition team to finally find an adult giant panda. Due to the lack of experience in capturing pandas, the expedition's actions were quickly detected by giant pandas. After some siege, the giant panda finally escaped smoothly.
Just when Ruth and the others were disappointed, a sound similar to a baby's cry suddenly came from the depths of the bamboo forest. The expedition proceeded cautiously along with the sound. They soon found a panda cub in a dead tree hole.
(Panda with a bowable attitude)
The cub is very lightweight and looks like it hasn't been born long ago. After a brief identification, Ruth believes it is a female panda. In order to express her gratitude to Yang Dideze, Ruth named the panda "Su Lin" after Yang Dideze's wife.
Ruth soon returned to Shanghai with Su Lin. During this time, Ruth fed SuRin like a mother.
As Ruth's capture of pandas spread more and more widely, the Chinese people at the time protested strongly against the incident, demanding that Ruth send the pandas back to Sichuan.
But for some political reasons, the Chinese government was forced to issue Ruth an animal exit permit, which was filled in as a "strangely shaped pug."
Ruth loaded Su Lin into a wicker cage and boarded a passenger ship bound for the United States.
After returning to the United States, Ruth temporarily raised Su Lin in her Manhattan apartment. As the media continued to report, more and more zoos began to contact Ruth and ask Ruth to transfer the panda to them.
Ruth initially put up a price of $20,000 for Surin, a price that deterred some zoos. Eventually, Ruth sold Su Lin to the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago for $8,750.
In the following time, americans rushed to Chicago from all directions, just to be able to see Su Lin. This even includes helen Keller, a famous blind writer who only wants to touch a panda.
(Quentin Yang and Ruth)
However, due to the inability to adapt to the American climate, Su Lin began to fall ill constantly. In order to be able to develop sustainably, the zoo hopes that Ruth will once again travel to China to find a partner for Su Lin who can bear offspring.
Ruth is in China again. This time, her partner became Yang Dideze's younger brother Yang Kunting. With the help of Yang Quentin, Ruth once again captured a panda in Sichuan. However, Ruth is quite sorry, because she thinks that this time she has caught a female panda again.
The panda was named "Meimei" by Ruth. Ruth sent the United States back to the United States by the same means.
But during this period, Su Lin accidentally swallowed a stick and died because of her naughtiness. During the dissection, it was discovered that Su Lin was actually a male panda.
Meimei, who came to the United States, also did not live for long, and only a few years later, Meimei also died of illness. During the dissection, it was also found that beauty is actually male.
After the two pandas died one after another, Ruth did not go poaching in China anymore. She wrote her story into a book called "The Lady and the Panda." The book became a bestseller in the United States, and Ruth also earned a considerable amount of money with the book.
In 1947, five years after meimei's death, Ruth, at the age of 46, died in an inn in Pittsburgh.
(Reference: Madame and the Panda)