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

In all these long-winded negotiations I had the invaluable help of my old friends V. K. TING, Hu SHIN, Fu SSU-NIEN and P. L. YUAN. Our expedition committee in Peking did not consider itself authorized to come to any agreements with me on its own responsibility, so it sent a detailed memorandum to the Central Committee in Nanking, which latter, as I have already mentioned, had with the aid of »experts » carefully informed itself of the character of our collection and the contents of our chests.

The answer we received from the Nanking committee was, certainly, conditional, but nonetheless much more favourable to us than we had dared to hope. We were thus permitted to take the collection to Sweden on condition that I guaranteed its return to China within a certain specified time. Further, a detailed exammination of the collection was to take place under the supervision and responsibility of Professor Fu SSU-NIEN.

We decided that this examination should be carried out on March 25th. It was to be performed by two reliable Chinese in the presence of NORIN and SODERBOM, and also at intervals and more as a matter of form, of Fu SSU-NIEN.

It was a strenuous day for these gentlemen, for the examination that now took place in a store-room in Wagons Lits was if possible even more thorough than that in Nanking. Every object was listed and photographed and then packed up again. The job lasted from 9 to 5 o'clock.

After this we had a meeting with the Chinese, at which our guarantee was gone through and approved and then, together with the list of objects, sent to the Minister of Finance. After the chests had been sealed and other formalities had been duly observed the chests were to be forwarded to Stockholm.'

The last days in Peking were, as always, taken up with all sorts of details in connection with the packing, sending off of heavy baggage by boat, telegrams and farewell visits.

It has been shown in the foregoing that in the course of our eight years' co-operation with the Chinese we had had many hard nuts to crack and that we had lost both time and money on their account. Still, it was with regret and gratitude that I took leave of the learned gentlemen when on March 28th I shook their hands for the last time. Many of them had also come to see us off on the train on the evening we left Peking. The same applied to many of our European and American friends — among the Americans were LATTIMORE and STEVENSON;

1 Only after further negotiations, and thanks to the good offices of our Minister, Baron BECKFRIIS, were the chests released. In 1937 they arrived in Sweden. The collection has since been published as Vol. VII: z in this series by BERGMAN, together with other archaeological finds from Sinkiang made by himself and other members of the expedition. They have aslo given rise to two special monographs, V. SYLWAN: Woollen Textiles of the Lou-lan People, and C. H. HJORTSJÖ & A. \VAI,ANDER: Das Schädel- and Skelettgut der archäologischen Untersuchungen in Ost-Turkistan. (Vols. VII: 2 and 3 of this series).

On account of the outbreak of the second world war it was impossible to send the collections back at the specified time, and they are still in Stockholm.

308