National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

> > > >
Color New!IIIF Color HighRes Gray HighRes PDF   Japanese English
0386 History of the Expedition in Asia, 1927-1935 : vol.3
History of the Expedition in Asia, 1927-1935 : vol.3 / Page 386 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

New!Citation Information

doi: 10.20676/00000210
Citation Format: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR Text

 

Before NORIN and I, on March 9th, took train for the north, our Consul-General, E. H. LINDQUIST, invited us and my three Chinese colleagues, YEW, KUNG and CHEN, to lunch. It was thus here in Shanghai that I took leave of these faithful companions on the long car-journey.'

PEKING

On March i ith NORIN and I reached Peking, where we once more met GEORG and EFFE, and also BÖKENKAMP. It was now that the final winding up of the expedition as from 1927 took place.

On March i4th I was the guest of honour at a big Chinese dinner. In the room where the guests assembled a piquant little episode took place just before we went in to dinner. HUANG WEN-PI, who had returned from Urumchi by bus and who had been indefatigable in his endeavours to put obstacles in the way of the expedition and its work, had been brazen enough to turn up among the guests. He also had the impertinence to come up to me and stretch out his hand with a foxy smile of greeting. I immediately went over to the master of ceremonies for the evening, Hu SHIN, and declared that if this fellow was to be present at the dinner I intended to leave on the spot. Hu SHIN skilfully solved this dilemma by giving HUANG the alternatives of either publicy, in the presence of the whole assembly, apologizing to me in amplissima forma, or disappearing. The smile faded from his lips and he crept off the premises. After this the dinner became cordial; and the hosts, our expedition committee and the Geological Survey of China, had really provided most prodigally. Speeches were held by Hu SHIH, WONG WEN-HAO, P. L. YUAN and AMADEUS GRABAU. I replied with warm gratitude for all the manifestations of friendship, hospitality and understanding with which I had been met in that illimitable China, whose soil I had trodden for the first time in the year 1890 in the extreme west, and to which I was now bidding farewell in the extreme east. All my Chinese and European friends in Peking were present at this successful and highly enjoyable dinner.

One day I was shown over the little institute where BERGMAN'S great collection of manuscripts on wood from the Edsen-gol were being transcribed. The work had been interrupted at the time of the Japanese advance towards Peking in 1933; but it had since been resumed. The whole work of transcription would, it was believed, take another whole year. Five hundred pages were calculated for the

1 For the great service that CHEN had done the big expedition in the heart of Asia, especially as HÖRNER'S assistant, I had promised him a bonus of 8,000 marks to enable him to prosecute studies in astronomy and geodesy at German institutes. Thanks to a further allowance from the Academia Sinica, he was able to study for three years in Germany, or until the outbreak of the world war, as well as a period in England, before returning home.

306