We can't imagine how much the entire country of China was in a near-total upheaval due to the Communists in 1931! Now they even had a new calendar, to replace the milennia-old calendar which celebrated the New Year in February. Yet life went on in China as did the lives of those in the ambitious expedition which we're following. The author noted that opium-smoking was not banned.
The adventurous men found themselves celebrating the last day of 1931 in Liangchow. Their host, the German missionary bishop, was wise and welcoming as he proclaimed, "You are thirty and you have your own supplies. Were you twice as many and without food, you would be welcome. You are French. We are Germans. Enemies? No. Here, so far from our homes, France and Germany seem like two provinces of a single fatherland," (p. 561). Mr. Maynard Owen Williams, Litt.D., the author of From the Mediterranean to the Yellow Sea by Motor: The Citroen-Haardt Expedition Successfully Completes Its Dramatic Journey, National Geographic Magazine, November, 1932, was quite pleased to be the lone American on the trip, a representative of the National Geographic Society.
They judged the next part of their trek to be the most difficult, having traveled the 250 miles from Liangchow to Ningsia in six days. "across this eroded, worn out, humpy no man's land, obstructed by rock-like hunks of earth and hollowed by gullies, amid which the trail is usually only a half-choked gullet between walls of loess which must be crumbled with a pick-ax before our seven-ton cars can pass," (p. 562). The weary group finally reached the seemingly deserted village of Hungshui, and fell asleep in cold eight degrees below zero (Fahrenheit).
On the move again after rest, the party "entered another world. The route was relatively good. The people were well-dressed and clean. Not a beggar did we see. The wide plain beside the Yellow River had a rich look about it, even in winter, and skirted men riding bicycles gave us a sense of arriving somewhere," (p. 564).
The motorcars were nearly constantly being repaired, and at one stop Mr. Williams remarked, "A camel or horse would have seemed very efficient," (p. 566). There were soldiers everywhere. Most let the foreigners pass. Once, soldiers fired at them after they had passed. Our explorers wanted the soldiers to think they had a machine gun and fired four shots in quick succession over their heads. The soldiers bought the idea and let them pass.
At Paotow, they saw electric lights and heard the sounds of a train whistle, an experience they had been without for the past seven months. Mr. Williams was met by W. Robert Moore, a representative from the National Geographic Society, who took charge of the more than 1,500 films and photographic plates which had been so carefully preserved from heat exceeding 120 degrees and cold at 30 degrees below zero. The material was in excellent condition.
When they met with an important official, French had to be translated into Chinese, then Chinese into Mongol, and finally Mongol into Tibetan for mutual understanding.
For nearly the entire trip, the group had lived like nomads. When they were near the end, their chief Chinese guide remarked to the author, "Williams, some day you will get all shaved up again, with a fine bath, a clean shirt, and a tuxedo, and it will surprise you to discover that you are still a gentleman," (p. 577).
"At high noon on February 12, 1932, the Citroen-Haardt Transasiatic Expedition swung into the grounds of the French Legation in Peiping (Peking, China), was welcomed by the elite of many nations, and came into well-earned glory. In 314 1/2 days Georges-Marie Haardt and Louis Andouin-Dubreuil. . . had blazed a 7,370-mile trail across Asia, the first overland exploration from the Mediterranean to the Yellow Sea since Marco Polo," (p. 577). "To live with these men, to see them in action, to help record their triumph, was the greatest adventure of my life," Mr. Williams exuberantly concludes. "The findings of the explorer gain value not from the fact that they are entirely new, but that they are more widely shared," (p. 578).
"Our aim was not to court adventures, but friendships. . . we had bridged the centuries as well as a continent," (p. 580).
Postscript: Sadly, their courageous leader, Mr. Haardt, died of pneumonia the following month in Hong Kong. The entire party returned in their motorcars to their city of origin, Beirut, Lebanon. They found the roads much improved since they had first attempted to pass over them.
No comments:
Post a Comment