Six of Floyd Tangier Smith's Pandas
Item
-
Title
-
Six of Floyd Tangier Smith's Pandas
-
Caption
-
West China, Szechuan, Chengtu. Baby pandas captured in the mountains of western Szechuan and kept for some months on the campus of the West China Union University until there was an opportunity to ship them to the States.
-
Identifier
-
MFA_005
-
Description
-
Six pandas are secured to stakes in the grass at intervals of about six or eight feet apart on the lawn of either Frank Dickinson's or Gordon Agnew's home on the WCUU campus. A man with a camera, two Chinese (probably servants) and a child are seen in the background, as is a fence and line of laundry.
-
Commentary
-
It is not known exactly how many live pandas Smith caught and kept at the WCUU campus before they either died or he got them safely out of China to zoos in Europe and America. He is reported to have had four pandas on campus in 1938, but there are clearly six here, five of whom can be identified as Happy (who went to the St. Louis Zoo after touring Europe), Grandma, Sung, Tang, and Ming (all of whom went to the London Zoo, but Grandma died days after arrival). A photo likely taken by the man with the camera in the United Church of Canada Archives also shows these six pandas, and includes the photographer of this image. The writing on the back of the UCCA version is reproduced here as the Caption. However, only one of these pandas, Happy, went America.
-
Creator
-
Harrison Mullett
-
Date Created
-
1938
-
Original Format
-
Black and White Photographic Print
-
Source
-
Jack Mullett
-
Provenance
-
Harrison and Bea Mullett, Jack Mullett to Old China Photo Project (OCPP); Zhang Yingming scanned the originals.
-
Publisher
-
SIUE
-
Record Date
-
2026-01-06
-
Contributor
-
Cory Willmott; Zhang Yingming
-
Type
-
Still Image
-
References
-
Canadian Old Photo Project Team. 2010. Chengdu, My Home: The Chinese Feelings Across the Pacific. Chengdu: Sichuan Publishing Company Ltd.
-
Published In
-
Foreign Missions Photograph Collection: UCCA 1999_001P3223
