Su-Lin (Chinese: 蘇琳; pinyin: Sūlín) was the name given to the giant panda cub captured in 1936 and brought to America by the explorer Ruth Harkness. Harkness, in her 1938 book [The Baby Giant Panda], gives clues as to the location of the original capture. The night of the capture she slept in "an old ruined castle which many years ago belonged to a great prince of Wassze" (p. 35). The next day they traveled down "first up a steep mountain ridge a...
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Su-Lin (Chinese: 蘇琳; pinyin: Sūlín) was the name given to the giant panda cub captured in 1936 and brought to America by the explorer Ruth Harkness. Harkness, in her 1938 book [The Baby Giant Panda], gives clues as to the location of the original capture. The night of the capture she slept in "an old ruined castle which many years ago belonged to a great prince of Wassze" (p. 35). The next day they traveled down "first up a steep mountain ridge and then down a river called the Min" (p. 36). The next tonight they stayed at a "Buddhist Ghost temple" in Wenchuan.
Su-Lin, 9 weeks old at the time of his capture, was named after Su-Lin Young, the sister-in-law of Harkness's expedition partner Quentin Young. Harkness translated Su-Lin as meaning "a little bit of something very cute" (p. 37). (Harkness and Young were unaware that the baby panda was, in fact, a male.)
Harkness returned to America with the bottle-fed cub, and Su-Lin became the first live panda to come to the United States. He...
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