Michael Kiefer
Chasing the Panda
How an Unlikely Pair of Adventurers Won the Race to Capture the Mythical "White Bear"

"Kiefer presents an exciting account of an unlikely expedition into the mountains of China, as New York urbanite Harkness set off to complete what her recently expired husband had begun: the capture of a giant panda." —Booklist

In 1936, Ruth Harkness, an American socialite, caused a sensation when she captured and brought back the first live giant panda to the United States. Overlooked amidst the public's immediate infatuation with Harkness and the infant panda Su-Lin was Quentin Young, the 22 year-old Chinese-American bring-'em-back-alive hunter, who led the 1,500-mile expedition into the remote, bamboo-thicketed mountains of Sichuan rife with warlords and bandits. Chasing the Panda sets the record straight, chronicling not only Harkness's hunt for the mythical white bear, but also the lives of two unheralded "real-life "Indiana Jones" Chinese-American brothers, Jack and Quentin Young and their tumultuous relationship.

Michael Kiefer, originally on assignment to write about Ruth Harkness, discovered Quentin Young living in anonymity in the United States and struck up a friendship with him. Chasing the Panda, studded with rare period photos, is the result of a decade-long friendship between Kiefer and Young, in which the truth of the panda expedition is revealed. As Quentin Young said to Michael Kiefer in their first conversation, "The truth is the truth. Now what else do you want to know?"

In Chasing the Panda, Michael Kiefer investigates the circumstances surrounding the controversy of Su-Lin, a quest marred with racist and sexist implications. Hunters and scientists were dumbfounded that a woman and a young "Chinaman" succeeded in capturing the giant panda where they had not. The immediate assumption had been that the pair had stolen the animal from a white man, Bill Harkness's arch-rival Floyd Tangier Smith, whose claims to Su-Lin carried weight because of his great white hunter status. Michael Kiefer's engrossing account irrefutably dispels the erroneous notion that a dilettante woman and a Chinese-American boy could never have succeeded where others with the right qualifications failed.

Chasing the Panda is an exciting chronicle of how this pair of adventurers traveled through uncharted mountains, traversed war-ravaged territories and faced down hostile warlords and ruthless bandits to become the first to capture and return with a live panda. Authentic photographs from the private archives of both Harkness's and Young's families accompany the incredible tale of the pair's sojourn deep into the core of China.

Michael Kiefer lives in Phoenix, Arizona. He has been an editor at Outside magazine and a staff writer at the Phoenix New Times. He has also written for Esquire, Vanity Fair, Self, Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, and many other publications. He has won more than two dozen state and national writing awards.

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