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0061 History of the Expedition in Asia, 1927-1935 : vol.1
History of the Expedition in Asia, 1927-1935 : vol.1 / Page 61 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000210
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On March 14th our position was approximately as follows: From Tientsin came a report from ZumnvrtRmANN to the effect that the customs authorities insisted on opening all of our 50o packing-cases, which were bound with iron hoops. YUNG, our friend from Wai-chiao-pu, told us that WANG YIN-T'AI had received a written protest from the opposition, demanding that the expedition be prohibited. He had replied in calm and conciliatory terms. YUNG advised us to pay no attention to any other authority than the Government itself, which had promised us passports and was entirely on our side. The Chinese press adopted quite another tone. No foreigners at all were to be tolerated in China. All of them should be hunted out of the country. The Chinese themselves could explore their mountains and deserts and their ancient sites; they needed no help from without. The expedition became increasingly a cause célèbre, and came in for a share of publicity that was anything but welcome after the strict silence we had hitherto managed to observe.

From Professor SHEN, the real ring-leader of the opposition, and from the newly established society »The Union of the Scientific Corporations of Peking» I received a letter of reply that was polite enough as to form but contained no positive contribution to the matter in hand. He was about to leave for an archaeological congress in Tokyo and suggested that I should carry on negotiations in the meantime with Professor Liu Fu.

The Government kept its word in the matter of the vans and a carriage. The Traffic Manager of the Sui-yüan Railway informed me that two vans with a capacity of 4o and 3o tons respectively had been loaded in Tientsin and taken up to Feng-t'ai for our account. A second-class carriage had been reserved at Hsichih-men station in the north-western corner of Peking. The charge for the hire of trucks and carriage together amounted to 3812 Mexican dollars, not counting likin or the inland duty in Tientsin.

THE OPPOSITION CONTINUES

The great banquet of conciliation that was to have been given by me on March 14th shrank into a complete fiasco. On the morning of that day I received polite regrets from every one of the seventeen members of the opposition whom I had invited. Some pleaded previous engagements, others referred to sickness or journeys. Only two Chinese, not members of the opposition, turned up.

There were no signs of a more conciliatory attitude on the part of the opposition. It was suggested that the only thing that might induce them to adopt a less uncompromising tone would be the exclusion of palaeontology and archaeology from my program and the dismissal of NoRIN and BERGMAN. Such a course was naturally out of the question. It almost seemed that the game was up,

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