The Lady and the Panda, by Vicki Constantine Croke

          This book is not my usual genre of choice. I rarely read biographical adventure stories, but this one is so compelling it may open up a whole new reading path for me.

         The Lady and the Panda tells the true story of an American socialite, Ruth Harkness, who in 1936 took over her dead husband's expedition to the border of China and Tibet and captured the first giant panda to be seen in the West.   In chapter 2, the author describes the city of Shanghai with such colorful stories and details that I feel transported back in time and across the miles to "a place of serious debauchery and vicious crime." 

          One of the many men who pursue the attractive widow [when she arrives in Shanghai]  is a young journalist, Vic Keane who becomes her guide.  

          He was the picture of the suave, good-natured American in Shanghai.  He lived amicably away from his wife, while win a large, handsome apartment he kept a beautiful and possessive White Russian mistress, whom Harkness described as "a really entrancing creature who speaks practically no English, but enough, I gather to make his life fairly miserable.  When he had to make trips out of town, his wife not only took over the reporting job for him but also assumed guardianship of the mistress, who was "as helpless as a kitten...."

           In the Chinese parts of Shanghai, Harkness saw beauty and a vibrant history.  "All of China, eating, sleeping, living, and loving there as they have for thousands of years--all in the dirty, and airless streets," she wrote.  Harkness pressed on, game to infiltrate even the most wretched dens.  With her newspaper chum as guide, she made her way into a filthy ramshackle building, where the air was redolent...with the sweet and sickening scent of opium. The Westerners stayed to observe a Chinese man and woman as they lay on couches smoking long pipes filled with the drug.

         The writing is excellent; reading these first fifty pages has been like taking a meandering walk into the city, then backtracking a century to the Opium War--and the devastating consequences of that war to the Chinese people. 

         By 1930, it [Shanghai] possessed more prostitutes per capita than any other city in the world. Here, the most depraved people from all walks of life came to satisfy their urges.  One particularly twisted warlord...a six-foot-seven manic with a shaved skull, loved to sweep into Shanghai surrounded by soldiers numbering into the thousands.  Fond of decapitating enemies and posting their heads on telephone poles, [he] played as hard as he butchered....

         Having recently visited Chicago, I'm also interested in the fact that the panda wound up in the Chicago Brookfield Zoo--where he attracted 53,000 visitors in one day, more than any other animal before or since in a single day.  Ruth Harkness and her panda made the front pages of the Chicago Tribute for a nine-day stretch--something no one but a president had ever done before. 

          But I'm getting ahead of myself.  So far, she hasn't even left Shanghai--and I'm already jumping ahead to Chicago!