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Retracing Ruth Harkness's journey IN the fall of 2002,I traveled to China with an incredible band of expedition mates: Ruth Harkness’s niece Mary Lobisco; Mary’s daughter Nicole; Hazel “Perkie” Perkins’ granddaughter Robin Perkins Ugurlu; and Jolly Young, daughter of Su-Lin and Jack Young, niece of Quentin Young. We were carrying with us Ruth’s ashes, which Mary planned to bury in the mountains where the explorer had her happiest days. .jpg)
On the Yangtze: Gourmet magazine photographer Meredith Heuer, Jolly Young, RobinPerkins Ugurlu, Mary Lobisco, Nicole Lobisco, Vicki Croke. I realized that I would never really know Ruth Harkness until I knew China. So, armed with Ruth’s own hand-drawn maps, we traveled from Hong Kong to Shanghai, up the Yangtze, on to Chengdu, and then by a caravan of Jeeps and sometimes on foot, high up into the mountains of China and Tibet.
We had been warned again and again that little of Harkness’s China would be left. But we were astonished at how much of her world did remain. I chronicled the adventure for Gourmet magazine – a publication that Ruth wrote for at the end of her life. The article ended with our discovery of Ruth’s “ruined ghost temple” in old Wenchuan. In this tiny village, which doesn’t even appear on most maps, this place where Westerners are never seen, we felt that the curtain of time was pushed aside and that we walked with Ruth Harkness in one of her most beloved haunts. Here we found the ghost temple, we heard children reciting the work of Harkness favorite poet, Li Po, and best of all, we spent time with villagers whose parents and grandparents had lived here during Ruth's travels. We passed around the pictures Ruth had taken here in 1936 and the people not only recognized houses, but relatives too. We didn't share a language, but still found ourselves laughing with them -- an experience Ruth Harkness had written of in her own book. We were searching for Ruth Harkness's China and the Gourmet article ended with this thought: “On that morning, high in what Harkness had called ‘that lost triangle of the world,’ we knew we had found what we were looking for.”
Here are a few pictures taken on that trip (most of these pictures were taken by Jolly Young). .jpg)
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Lost in Shanghai. (left). Our slippers from the Shanghai Ritz padded all over China. (right) .jpg) Jolly takes this digital picture of a little girl (left), and then shows her and her father the shot (right). Left: We meet Jack Young Jr. in Chengdu. Right: Vicki interviewing the veterinarian (center) at Wolong as our guide Leon looks on. High up in the mountains of the Wolong Reserve, we stop to discuss how dangerous the driving has become in the fog. From here, we go to Chaopo Valley where Ruth Harkness captured Su-Lin. The Chinese elm where Mary buried Ruth's ashes. |
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