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officials in Shanghai stopped Sulin from sailing to America because Mrs. Harkness had neglected to obtain the necessary permit to export live animals. After much discussion and wrangling, Mrs. Harkness was able to leave Shanghai for San Francisco with Sulin on the President McKinley, carrying with her a "passenger voucher" for "one dog".
Two years later, in 1938, Floyd Smith succeeded in bringing five live giant pandas to England, creating a general sensation around the world.
Research into Chinese records for records on the giant panda
With all the hoopla around the world starring one of China's very own, faces were red indeed back in the Central Kingdom. Nobody had even suspected the existence of such a delightful treasure in China's own backwoods.
Researchers were challenged to dig into Chinese historical records and ancient writings to find proof that, after all, the Chinese had known all about the giant panda since antiquity.
The Synthesis of Books and Illustrations of Ancient and Modern Times, a work compiled during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) but not printed until 1722, is a wonderful source for quick reference of Chinese scholarship throughout the ages. Thumbing through the chapters on animals, scholars of the 1930s came up with a plethora of animal names that they fitted into physical descriptions of the modern giant panda in one way or another. Some of these choices could be traced to the classics, the Book of Odes, an anthology of poetry mostly dating from the early Zhou era (1122-722 B.C.), and Erya, a dictionary thought to date from the third century B.C. Antiquity indeed.
That giant pandas had existed in China since geological times was never a point in dispute. Studies of fossil remains have proved beyond any doubt that pandas had lived in China during the Pleistocene. Furthermore, their geographical distribution had been much more extensive than today's. They had lived in areas outside the southwestern mountains, and had roamed the provinces of the north and the east, including Liaoning, Shandong, Anhui, and Jiangsu.