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China: The Panda Adventure

2001, Movie, NR, 50 mins

China: The Panda Adventure: Review

CHINA: THE PANDA ADVENTURE
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In the 1930s, few Westerners had ever seen a living panda, and most of those who had were big-game hunters. In 1936, independently wealthy adventurer William Harkness set out to China, determined to bring one back alive. But Harkness fell ill and died in Shanghai, which might have been the end of things if not for the determination of his widow, socialite Ruth McCombs Harkness (whom Harkness married a mere two weeks before his departure). She inherited her husband's expedition and, against all odds, succeeded where he had failed. Harkness's story, which she recounted in The Lady and the Panda (1938), is told in this IMAX film. Harkness (Maria Bello) meets with considerable resistance when she arrives in Shanghai and announces that she wants to assemble a group and travel up the Yangtze River, through the Min Valley and into the isolated, misty Szechuan bamboo forests, with the aim of bringing back a panda. Bad enough that Chinese legends paint the roly-poly panda as a ferocious beast, and that no one can imagine a woman coordinating — let alone leading — such an arduous undertaking. But Harkness is also up against trophy hunter Dakar Johnston (Xander Berkeley), whose rifle sights are set on the black-and-white giants. Armed with her husband's journal and accompanied by his Chinese associate, Quentin Young (Yu Xia), Harkness rises to the task. She retraces her husband's steps up river, and when she and Young find they can't put together a party of bearers from among the able-bodied local men (most of whom have already been hired by Johnson), they recruit women and press on. Since her claim to fame is having brought the first living panda — a cub named Su Lin — out of China, Harkness's success is a given, but the footage of pandas in their natural surroundings is enchanting. This film is endorsed by the World Wildlife Fund, which supports conservation efforts on behalf of the dwindling population of wild pandas, who are endangered by poaching and, more significantly, loss of habitat. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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