Capturing the First Live Panda

Would you like to know how the first live panda was captured? Listen to Quentin Young’s own story of that event.

“I was employed by a widowed American woman to accomplish the project in which her husband had died when attempting it. He had wanted to bring a live panda to the United States. Together, aboard boat, on foot, by wheelbarrow and sedan chair, we traversed almost 2,000 miles from coastal Shanghai to the forests beyond Chengtu.

“Why a boat? The Yangtze is the answer. China’s great languid river was our route to Chungking. It is a lazy river, though always bustling with traffic. People, dogs and chickens can be heard chattering, barking, cackling and crowing along its banks​—up to Hankow! But then its personality changes. Cliffs rise to almost 2,000 feet. These are the famous Yangtze Gorges. Yet, so vital a link in traffic is this river that gangs of laboring coolies lean against hard bamboo ropes from as high as a hundred feet up the cliff walls to drag small boats (called junks) up against the thundering downstream current.

“Why by foot, sedan chair, wheelbarrow? Our going ashore at Chungking left us with many miles between us and pai hsiung, the panda. By the time you are in Chungking the topography of the earth is beginning to swell upward toward the great mountain mass of the Himalayas.

“When shouting, would-be vendors and just curious people were not milling about us, dust swirled up to engulf us. Bandits harassed us. Coolies and porters lugging our supplies disappeared as wages satisfied their need for opium. We fought the whipping branches of trees as roads dropped out of existence. When it rained, dust became mud. We threaded our way through the magnificent rhododendron forests of Szechwan. As the elevation increased, the temperature dropped.

“After the complications of our expedition, the actual finding of the panda was amazingly simple. We had given orders that pandas were not to be shot until a live one had been captured. Traps had been set.

“Mrs. Harkness and I set out to check the traps. Suddenly shots shattered the silence! Shouting ahead of us indicated that hunters, excited at the sight of a panda, had defied the order. Men raced forward responding to the cry pai hsiung! pai hsiung! We too ran, but did not follow the others as they pursued the possibly wounded animal.

“The forest quieted around us as their cries diminished in the distance. We emerged from dense bamboo into an area of large trees. Then I heard something. It was a small, babylike sound, coming from a hollow tree.

“I put my hands into the hollow and drew them out cuddling Su-Lin. ‘She’ (as we then thought) was just two handfuls in size. I thought, ‘What is this little thing? It is a toy.’ I gave it to Mrs. Harkness with the feeling of ‘Well, you take it back and play with it. I will get on with the business of hunting for real pandas​—adults.’ But without telling me she had made up her mind weeks before that what she really wanted was a baby panda. With great practicality she had decided that a young panda would be more portable. What none of us counted on was that this small squirming object would touch some common chord of emotion all over the world.”

Some may remember that in 1936 many were thrilled at newspaper accounts of the arrival at Brookfield Zoo in Chicago of a delightful ‘new bear from China.’ It was a black-and-white panda that resembled the stuffed teddy bears that accompany millions of children to bed each night.

Those newspaper reports also interested twenty-two-year-old Quentin Young of China. It was he who had started that panda on its long journey from the bamboo forests of Szechwan to the United States. Quentin Young had been the first man known to have touched a living, unwounded panda.

As a naturalist and hunter in China’s rugged interior and western provinces, Quentin Young had given the world outside of China its first glimpse of China’s pai hsiung, meaning white bear.

I Meet the Hunter

Thirty-three years later, as a new arrival in Taiwan, I was chatting with my language instructor, or lao shr (professor), following a two-hour lesson. He had introduced the subject of the panda, speaking softly and with reticence. It was the second or third week of our acquaintance.

“Tell me,” he inquired, “have you ever heard of the panda?” The answer, of course, was a smiling and interested Yes. “I do not quite know how to tell you this without making it seem boastful,” he continued, “but I caught the first live panda.”

I enthusiastically asked (recalling what I had read in 1936): “Was that the one that went to a zoo in Chicago? Was her name Su-Lin?”

“Yes!” he responded with delight, bounding to his feet. “You even know its name!” It was named after my brother’s wife.”

You probably guessed it. My language instructor was Quentin Young, the man who hunted pandas. Quentin carefully referred to the panda as “it.” Why so? Because they had first guessed the animal to be a female, giving it the name Su-Lin (meaning “little bit of something precious”). But later they discovered that “she” was really a “he.”