Journey Across China

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Journey Across China

Overview

In 1931 André Citroën (1878-1935), the French automobile manufacturer, sponsored an expedition that retraced the ancient Silk Road followed by Marco Polo in the thirteenth century. The goal of the expedition, led by Georges-Marie Haardt (1884-1932), was to increase international understanding through trade, science, and art.

Background

André Citroën introduced mass production to France in a munitions plant that he transformed into an automobile factory after the First World War. Citroën was as interested in marketing and adventure as he was in cars. Known as a risk taker, he sponsored three expeditions that showcased the half-track cars designed by his company for rugged cross-country travel. The first expedition, in 1922, crossed the Sahara Desert from Algeria to Sudan. The second, in 1924, was a 1,300-mi (2,092 km) trek from Algeria south to Madagascar. These expeditions demonstrated the potential of motorized travel across French Colonial Africa, and also drew attention to the African people and landscapes through books, photographs, movies, and drawings.

Both African expeditions were led by Georges-Marie Haardt, the director-general of the Citroën factories. It was he who planned every detail, choosing routes, buying equipment, and dispatching supplies along the trail. Louis Audouin-Dubreuil (1887-1960), a former Air Service officer stationed in the Sahara during World War I, was the co-leader. Looking for new challenges, Citroën chose Haardt and Audouin-Dubreuil to lead a third expedition. The proposed itinerary was from Beirut, Lebanon, north through Russian-controlled Turkestan, then across the Gobi Desert to Peking (now Beijing). From there, the expedition would proceed south to Saigon and then west, back to Beirut, linking the two French colonies.

Preparations required two years of intense work by Haardt, Audouin-Dubreuil, and others. The most difficult task was obtaining travel permits from the Russians and Chinese. To strengthen their status as a scientific mission, Haardt enlisted a scientist from the National Geographic Society of America. The group also included the French priest and geologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), a painter, a cinematographer, and a writer, Georges Le Fèvre (1892-1968), who chronicled the expedition. The backbone of the group, however, were the mechanics, 19 in all. Altogether, 40 men took part.

Three months before their departure, the Soviet government revoked the group's permit to cross Turkestan. With 50 tons of supplies already on the way to depots across China, Haardt decided to enter China through Afghanistan and the Pamir mountain range instead. To maximize the chance of success on this much more difficult route, Haardt split the group into two parts that would start from opposite directions. The Pamir group, originating in Beirut, would traverse the Pamirs. The China group, originating in Peking, would meet them just north of the Pamirs, then return with them to Peking. In the space of three months, new routes were planned, special track-cars built for the mountainous terrain, climbing equipment assembled, and new permits obtained. At the last minute, a rebellion in Afghanistan forced the group to revise their route yet again, this time from the Pamirs to the even loftier Himalayas.

The Pamir group (as they still referred to themselves) set out from the Mediterranean on April 4, 1931. Driving under the same flag he had flown in Africa, Haardt led his group to the first stop, Baghdad, Iraq, where they were welcomed by a parade. Entering Persia (modern Iran), they saw forerunners of the petroleum industry: a caravan of 500 camels, each carrying two cans of oil. They progressed across Afghanistan at a rate of 100 miles (161 km) a day, their cars separated at "dust intervals."

As they crossed the northern plains of British India (now Pakistan), temperatures rose so high (50°C or 122°F) that gasoline began to vaporize in the engines. In this sunbaked landscape they were greeted by British officers and a battalion of Highland Guards dressed in kilts and playing bagpipes. They prepared for the upcoming Himalayan climb in the luxury of a mountain resort as guests of the Maharajah of Kashmir. Haardt estimated that the climb would take 45 days and require 400 porters or 200 pack horses, four times the number available. The only solution was to split into four groups leaving at eight-day intervals, reusing the same porters and horses.

The climb began with rain that continued for five days, washing the road away in several spots. Haardt had decided to take two cars as far up the mountain as possible, which meant hauling them around hair-pin turns and across wooden bridges. At the western end of the Himalayan range, their path was covered with 20 feet (6 m) of snow, which reduced their pace to less than a mile per hour up the 45-degree slope. Finally the cars were disassembled into 60-pound loads and carried. Adding to the physical hardship of the climb were thin air, bright sunlight, constant fatigue, and dysentery. After reaching the halfway point through the mountains, Haardt received a message that the China group had been detained in Sinkiang province.

In contrast to the Pamir group, the China group's hardships were due to politics rather than nature. In 1931 the Kuomingtang, or Nationalist, Party, had a fragile hold of the Chinese government. One of its policies was to rid China of foreigners, who had enjoyed special privileges and trade advantages since the 1840s. As a result, the French were subject to suspicion and delays as they crossed China. Just before they were scheduled to meet the Pamir group, they were detained for two months by the governor-general of Sinkiang, an autonomous province in western China. He refused to let them leave until they promised to send him three cars and three radio sets, which he thought would be helpful in controlling his war-torn land. After long negotiations, permission was given to the China group to leave and for both groups to cross Sinkiang on their way east to Peking.

Once he learned of the China group's delay, Haardt decided it would be a waste of time and energy to take the track-cars the rest of the way through the mountains, and he and his party set off on horseback. Their route followed a one-foot-wide path between nearly vertical mountain walls in a landscape of unearthly severity. A bridge over a deep gorge consisted of three ropes made of twisted brushwood. One was the path, the other two the hand rails. The four parties reassembled at the western border of China, where their belongings and fresh supplies were transferred to yaks from the porters, who, bare-footed, had carried 60-lb (27 kg) loads across the mountain peaks. Messages from the China group informed them that four track-cars would meet them in China, but that the cars and radios promised to the governor-general had been seized by rebels, and their passage through Sinkiang was therefore in jeopardy. Luckily, Citroën was shipping duplicate equipment via Moscow. On September 16, after 65 days in the mountains, the Pamir group rode east, expecting to meet the China group.

It was not until October 27, however, that the entire expedition was united in Urumchi, the capital of Sinkiang. They had hoped to set off for Peking immediately, but were forced to wait one month until the cars and radio equipment arrived. The delayed departure made the journey east even more arduous. Temperatures fell as low as -33°C (-27°F). Most of the gasoline and oil that had been hidden along the route earlier had been taken by rebel troops. The cars had to be kept running constantly so the radiators would not freeze, and hot soup froze almost before it could be drunk. Along the way they encountered Catholic missionaries, marauding bandits, and Buddhist monks who offered them salted tea with butter. They were invited to Mongol New Year celebrations, marked by fireworks and attended by princes in embroidered silk caftans.

On February 12 the expedition entered Peking where they were received by cheering crowds at the French embassy. Instead of continuing their journey to the battle-torn south, they decided to go by sea to Haiphong and then by land to Saigon, both in French Indo-China (now Vietnam). From there, the plan was to complete the circle by traveling west back to Beirut. Haardt, suffering from fever and fatigue after their stay in Peking, stopped in Hong Kong for a few days' rest. There he developed pneumonia and died on March 16. Haardt had been the mainspring of the expedition. Without him, there was no desire to continue and the expedition returned to France.

Impact

During such a turbulent time and in such a turbulent region, André Citroën's goal of increasing international understanding had little chance of success. Certainly there were positive interactions between the French and the people of the lands they traversed. For example, the expedition's doctor treated people wherever they stopped. And the goods distributed along the way—cash payment to guides, bribes to bandits, gifts to monasteries and officials, even the cars and radios extorted by the governor-general of Sinkiang—undoubtedly created the impression that France was a rich and scientifically advanced country. But China, in particular, was trying to rid itself of foreign imperialism, and moving in the opposite direction from Western capitalism.

The expedition did, however, increase communication between East and West. After its arrival in Peking, newspapers in major Chinese cities ran admiring articles about the "face" or prestige the expedition had earned for France. A book describing the expedition, La Croisière Jaune, translated into English as An Eastern Odyssey, presented a verbal and photographic description of lands and people that were largely unknown in the West. The expedition also served as a publicity device for automobiles in general and Citroën in particular. Unfortunately, its enormous cost contributed to Citroën's bankruptcy in 1935.

The scientific and artistic impact of the expedition is easier to measure. The expedition included experts in the fields of archeology, geology, botany, biology, photography, film, and art. They brought back 5,000 photos, 200,000 feet (60,960 m) of film, drawings, paintings, and ethnographic documents, as well as collections of flora and fauna, all of which became the topics of exhibitions and scholarly articles that can be consulted today.

LINDSAY EVANS