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Prologue
The battered old Douglas C-47 Skytrain of the China
National Aviation Corporation, its chocolate brown fuselage battle-scarred
with bullet holes and dents, shuddered its way down through the rain clouds,
the pilot following the slow bends of the Yangzi River until he had the sandspit
landing field in sight in front of him and the cliffs of China's capital city
to his left.
The pilot lost altitude fast in
case any Japanese fighters were lurking behind the thunderheads, fixed his
position by the batteries of antiaircraft guns guarding the runway approach,
and lined up between the rows of red-and-white-painted oil drums that had
been set down as markers. He trimmed his flaps, throttled back his two engines,
grimaced as the plane lurched briefly in a sudden crosswind that was typical
for this time of year, and then finally bumped heavily down onto the old
riverbed that served as the nation's principal aerodrome. He braked; turned
back and headed in past squadrons of parked American and Chinese fighter
planes, toward the glitter of Quonset huts that served as terminal buildings;
then slowed and taxied to a stop.
A lone British army sergeant was
waiting beside the baggage trailer. As soon as the propellers stopped turning,
and once the rear door of the aircraft was flung open and a pair of mechanics
rolled the makeshift steps into place, he stepped forward to greet the
aircraft's two passengers.
The first to emerge was a
uniformed soldier much like himself, though an officer and very much older. The
other, the more obviously important of the pair and immediately recognizable as
the VIP for whom he had been dispatched, was an unusually tall, bespectacled
man, scholarly-looking and rather owlish, with a head of straight, very thick
dark brown hair. He emerged blinking into the harsh sun, evidently startled by
the sudden heat that for the past two weeks had enfolded the city like a
steaming blanket.
Once this visitor, who was
wearing a khaki shirt and baggy army fatigue shorts and was carrying what
looked like a well-worn leather briefcase, had stepped down onto the soil, the
driver stood to attention and saluted smartly.
"A very good afternoon to you,
Dr. Needham," he called out over the clatter as the plane's cargo was being
unloaded. "Welcome to Chungking. Welcome to the center of China."
It was late in the afternoon of
March 21, 1943, a Sunday, and Noël Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham, a daring
young scientist who was known both in his homeland—England—and in America as
combining a donnish brilliance and great accomplishments as a biologist with a
studied eccentricity, had arrived in this most perilous of outposts on a vital
wartime mission.
He had been a long time coming.
About three months earlier, he had set out on his journey, leaving first by steam
train from Cambridge, 8,000 miles away. He had then
sailed east in a freighter from Tilbury, dodging Axis raiders all the while,
heading out to the Orient by way of Lisbon, Malta, the Suez Canal, and Bombay,
and eventually around India to the port of Calcutta. Here, late in February, he
boarded an American Army Air Corps plane that ferried him high across the
glaciers and peaks of the Himalayas
and into the heartland of China.
Now he had arrived in its
capital—or at least, the capital of the part of the country that was still free
of the Japanese invaders—and he was eager to begin his work. Joseph Needham's
mission was of sufficient importance to the British government to warrant his
having an armed escort: the passenger with him on the aircraft was a man named
Pratt, a King's Messenger who had been charged by London with making absolutely
certain that Needham reached his final destination—His Britannic Majesty's
embassy to the Republic of China—safe and sound.
The pair began their climb up
into the city. They first walked across a rickety pontoon bridge that floated
on boats anchored in the fast-flowing Yangzi. They were followed by the
embassy driver and a small squad of ban-ban men, the well-muscled porters who had slung Needham's innumerable pieces of baggage
onto the thick bamboo poles they held yoked across their shoulders. The small
group then began to clamber up the steps—nearly 500 of them, the lower few rows
of massive foot-high granite setts muddy and slimy with the daily rise and
fall of the river; the upper ones hot and dusty, and alive with hawkers and
beggars and confidence men eager to trick any newcomers panting up from the
riverside.
By the time they reached the
top, and the lowermost of Chongqing's
ziggurat of streets, Needham was perspiring heavily. It was
well over ninety-five degrees that afternoon, and the humidity was as high as
in Mississippi in July: people had warned him
that Chongqing was one of the country's three
"great furnaces." But he knew more or less what to expect: "The man who is
selected to come to China," his letter of appointment had
stated, "must be ready for anything."
The driver unlocked his jeep,
and began loading Needham's gear. King's Messenger Pratt,
his duty now complete, shook Needham
by the hand, remarking gruffly that he hoped Needham would be happy in China, and that it had been a privilege to have escorted so remarkable a
man. He saluted, and scurried off down a side street where a car was waiting
for him.
Needham took a cigarette from a case in
his shirt pocket, lit it, inhaled deeply, and gazed down to the river below.
The scene was mesmerizing: sailing junks, salt barges, and sampans made their
way languidly across the immense stream, while armed patrol vessels and navy
tenders pushed more urgently against the current, bent on more pressing
business. The aircraft on which he had arrived took off with a roar, rose
quickly, and turned away, diminishing into a speck above the mountains that
ringed the city. Everything that he could see and hear as he leaned over the
terrace—the boom of a siren from a passing cargo ship, the constant jangle of
rickshaw bells in the streets beside him, the ceaseless barrage of cries and
shouted arguments from within the tenements that rose about him; and then the smells, of incense smoke, car exhaust,
hot cooking oil, a particularly acrid kind of pepper, human waste, oleander,
and jasmine—all served to remind him of one awesome, overwhelming reality: that
he was at last here, in the middle of the China he had dreamed of for so long.
The
foregoing is excerpted from The Man Who Loved China by Simon Winchester. All
rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written
permission from HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022
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