LANGDON WARNER WRITES ACCOUNT OF FOGG MUSEUM EXPEDITION TO CHINA

The following article was written for the Crimson by Langdon Warner '03, a Fellow of the Fogg Museum for Research in Asia, on the last Chinese expedition which representatives of the Museum have taken part in. Mr. Warner and his associates returned to this country last spring and are now preparing the material they collected there for exhibition in the Fogg Museum. The 1924-25 expedition, which is the latest of Mr. Warner's several trips in China, was impeded by the fighting which was taking place in eastern China at that time. The party took a large number of photographs of the country and people they encountered, three of which are produced on this page to illustrate Mr. Warner's account of the expedition.

The 1924-5 China expedition conducted by the Fogg Museum is now engaged on working up the material secured by them in the field. They reached the borders of Chinese Turkestan after a long and rather difficult out journey across four provinces.

Fighting on, the Lunghai railway forced them to make a long detour adding a month to the trip. Later, in Shens! Province they found themselves in the wake of the defeated provincial army which had looted the villages along the road and largely wrecked the inns. The country was much upset and bands of robbers were frequent. Happily they had but one encounter with bandits. On the North west trade route they discovered some hitherto unreported rock grottoes of the sixth century, A. D. Enough evidence was there found to establish the date, but the sculpture had been badly destroyed during the various Mohametan rebellions which have devastated that part of China. Their stay there was cut short by the unfriendly attitude of the villagers who regarded their investigations with suspicion.

Pushing on, they reached the western boundary of Kaasu Province some eighty miles from the Turkestan border. There they had hoped to spend some months studying and making complete photographic records of the wall paintings in the Tun Huang grottoes. News from the coast, however, arrived at about that time that the strikes and shootings in Shanghai had resulted in what amounted to a general and anti-foreign sentiment. This was felt even in the remote west and the Harvard party were not permitted to take up their residence at the Tun Huang oasis or to make the necessary photographs.

At this time the party was under the leadership of H. H. F. Jayne '21, Curator of Oriental art at the Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia. Dr. Horace Stimson of the Peter Beht Brigham Hospital, R. F. S. Starr, the photographer and Alan Priest '23, tutor in Fine Arts, and Daniel V. Thompson '22, also of the division of Fine Arts, were assisting in their various capacities. Langdon Warner '03, of the Fogg Museum had been delayed in Peking on other business for the college, but joined them some three days after they had been forced to retire from Tun Huang. Messrs. Jayne and Priest continued west to Urumchi the capital of Chinese Turkestan, where, after some delay, they received the Russians' permission to strike to the northwest and take the trans-Siberian Railroad to Peking.

Thompson and Clark, who had come up with Warner, left ahead of the others, travelling on houseback to Lanehow where they came down the Yellow river on a small skin raft to the railhead and a hence by rail to Peking. Starr, Stimson and Warner brought up Lie rear more slowly on carts till they too reached the river and changed to a raft. On the return march five sets of small early Buddhist cave chapels were explored, two of them hitherto unreported. The early sculpture at these sites had been entirely destroyed and the wall paintings had been restored in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. Photographic records were made of the most important of these wall paintings which may be the subjects of a special report issued by the Fogg Museum.

The results of this expedition include a large addition to the huge collection of rubbings of Chinese stone inscriptions already possessed by the Fogg Museum, and photographic records of a series of paintings which are likely to prove to great interest as the work of the little known list Hsi Hsia dynasty which came to an end in the destructive times of Ghengis Khan Professor Paul Pelliot of the College de France, who visited Harvard in March to lecture at the Fogg Museum on recent discoveries in Chinese Archaeology is one-of three living scholars who can discipher this Hsi Hsia language. Of their art, little has been known up to this time, and the wall paintings of the caves at Hsiao Ch'ien of which the expedition brought back careful photographic records will, it is hoped, prove of very real significance.

The Oriental department of the Fogg Museum has entirely outgrown its quarters and the treasures of the first China expedition cannot be shown until they move into the new building. The Bruce collection of Chinese paintings also can not be made available until next year. Crowded as they are, however, three large Chinese frescoes which have been acquired within the past few months can be seen at the Museum. One of these was given by Herberi Strauss '03 and another by certain friends of the Fogg Museum. They have not yet been made the subject of special investigation but are thought to date from the thirteenth century.