Unleashed Voice: Celestial horses, foreign devils and Taiwan's future

“They move like snakes and look like dragons.” General Zhang Qian, 104 B.C. and onward to Taiwan today

This is the latest of an occasional series for Andelman Unleashed showcasing remarkable voices with compelling stories—past, present and future. Our voice is again that of Audrey Ronning Topping, a remarkable photographer, journalist and chronicler with a pedigree nonpareil ...widow of the late Seymour Topping of The New York Times, and daughter of the first Canadian ambassador to Mao Zedong's China.

Today, in the wake of a watershed election in Taiwan, she reflects on this feisty democracy, one China and voices from the past that sought reconciliation.

By Audrey Ronning Topping

I took this photo of a bronze statue of the legendary Celestial Flying Horse, Tien Ma, shortly after it was discovered in 1971 in the tomb of a Han Dynasty emperor (206 BC to 220 AD). It is considered one of China’s finest ancient works of art. The head and tail are raised high in a free gallop, its fleeting touch of earth is brilliantly suggested by one hoof conveyed on a flying swallow.

Both China and the United States have had a stake in Taiwan’s three-way race for the presidency with its implications for Taiwan’s national identity, but for the economy as well of much of the world. Taiwan’s dominant company, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) produces the microchips used in nearly all the world’s smartphones, a third of its personal computers, and myriad other devices that we all use every day.

Taiwan is now living in an unprecedented time. Many countries see the island democracy of almost 24 million people as a significant world player despite condemnation from mainland China. The Communists won China’s Civil War in 1949, but dangerous tensions still exist with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang (KMT) which controlled Taiwan as an autocratic, one-party state until the island’s forceful transition to democracy in the 1990’s. Contenders for the three way presidential race this month were Hou Yu-ih, Kuomintang (KMT) which descended from Chiang’s Nationalist party that led the Republic of China for two decades before retreating to Taiwan in 1949. The two other candidates were Ko Wen-je of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and Vice President Lai Ching-te. (DPP ) Democratic Progressive Party of the (DPP) whose leader, TKTK, has held the office of president for the past eight years with a term limit preventing her from standing for election for a third time.

Mainland China wanted to hold Taiwan close within its orbit and without question saw the defeat of the DPP as the best opportunity to rein Taiwan in. But Chinese president Xi Jing ping faces a stark truth. No matter which party would have won, Taiwanese support for unification remains low while the island’s embrace of Taiwanese identity is higher than ever. Although the fighting of China’s Civil War has ended, the conflict still goes on. Still, both Chinas share one point of agreement. Celestial horses will always be an icon of superpower status and national prestige in both.

This is a story about what happened behind the scenes with my father and Chiang Kai-shek’s Heavenly Horse.

Madam & Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek dining with Chester Ronning. China 1949 —photo by Carl Mydans for LIFE Magazine.

Nanjing, July 1948

My story begins at an intimate dinner party taking place in Generalissimo Chiang Kai- shek’s ‘Heavenly Palace’ in Nanjing. At the same time, one million Communist revolutionary troops were massing to sail across the Yangtze River in armed Chinese junks to seize Nanjing, the walled-in capital city of Nationalist China. The hostess was the renowned Madam Chiang Kai-shek, recently returned from fund-raising events in New York City. She seated my father, Chester Ronning, then chargé d’affairs of the Canadian Embassy in China, next to her husband, Chiang Kai-shek, also the president of the Nationalist Republic of China, which was at war with Mao Zedong’s Communists.

At that very moment, however, the Generalissimo seemed more concerned about “Wudi’, his Celestial Horse (Tien Ma) than in China’s Civil War. After the last sea-slug had been consumed at the dinner table, Chiang Kai-shek surprised the  Canadian diplomat by asking him to take control of his ‘divine Heavenly Horse’ whose pedigree, Chiang claimed, dated back some 2,000 years to the Han Dynasty. This temporary arrangement would exist only until the prized stallion could join the Generalissimo in his palatial sanctuary on the island of Formosa (now Taiwan), 100 miles off the Fukien coast.

Chiang Kai-shek was obviously in haste to flee Mainland China before the Communists captured his capital city of Nanjing. He confided to my dad that his Celestial Horse needed daily exercise but none of his own officers, most of whom had been roundly defeated by their Communist foes, dared to ride ‘Wudi,’ who had been named after the first emperor of the Han Dynasty. Dad felt honored. This was the most exciting challenge he had encountered since his diplomatic assignment to Nationalist China. Chester accepted with pleasure. Little did the former Canadian cowboy realize that he would soon be learning diplomatic protocol the hard way—from a tough, golden coated Celestial Horse.

The two men, both in their early fifties, had first met four years earlier in 1945, in Chongqing, China’s wartime capital. The former Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) Squadron Leader, Chester Ronning, smartly attired in white tie and tails, had presented his diplomatic credentials to President Chiang Kai-shek who, in full uniform, embracing a chest of blazing medals, officially welcomed the new diplomat. During the reception, they shared their mutual respect for horses and soon began riding together.

The Marshall Mission

The main event in Chongqing at this time 1945-46, was the Marshall Mission, the core of a peace settlement brokered by the United States, aimed at preventing the continuation of China’s Civil War which had begun during the Warlord Period in 1927 and continued sporadically for the next 18 years. The goal of the Marshall Mission was to unify the Nationalists and Communists with the hope that a strong, non-Communist China could be established to act as a bulwark against the encroachment of the Soviet Union while at the same time help China create a “Democracy with Chinese characteristics.”

Chongqing, 1945: A rare photo of Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong together during the Marshall Mission

During World War ll (1939-1945), when the Japanese Army forcefully occupied China, Chiang’s Nationalist Army (the Kuomintang or KMT) and Mao Zedong’s Communist Red Army had called a truce in the Civil War and joined forces to fight the Japanese. After World War ll, President Harry S. Truman dispatched his most distinguished general, George Marshall, on a peace mission to Chongqing. Squadron Leader Ronning, who had been born in China of American missionary parents and spoke fluent Mandarin, represented Canada and often unofficially interpreted for General Marshall.

Unfortunately, the Marshall Mission failed to establish peace. The ‘Gimo’ (American slang for Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek) then moved his Nationalist headquarters from Chongqing down the Yangtze River to Nanjing, China’s Southern capital. Foreign diplomatic missions were obliged to follow. Ronning packed up the Canadian embassy and sailed down through the risky, untamed Three Great Gorges of the Yangtze to Chiang’s southern capital of Nanjing, where he proudly raised the first Canadian flag to fly in China.

At the same time, I had left my peaceful home in Canada and was sailing on the Marine Lynx, a converted American troop ship, across the Pacific with my mother, two teen-age sisters, Meme and Kjeryn, and our six-year-old brother Harmon to join our father in China’s Canadian Embassy.

Cultural shock! There were more people crowding the dock in Shanghai than we had seen in a lifetime in Canada. War-torn Nanjing was flooded with homeless refugees from the northern war zones. I landed a job as a broadcaster and disk jockey for the American Armed Forces Radio station, became the only “foreign devil” singing in the University of Nanjing’s choir, and fell madly in love with a dashing war correspondent called Seymour Topping, or 'Top'. Two years later, against all odds, Mao Zedong’s Red Army fought their way from Communist headquarters in the caves of Yenan to the Yangtze River and was preparing to invade Chiang’s capital. After dinner that night with my father, Chiang expressed his concern about leaving his Celestial horse. He reminded dad again that Wudi’s ancestors were all of royal lineage.

Emperor Wu (Son of Heaven)

During the Han Dynasty, Emperor Wu, known as the “Martial Emperor” (140-87 BCE) was famous for his military conquests and the opening of the Silk Road.

The ancestors of Chiang Kai- shek’s horse had been bred as war horses by the quite literally bloodthirsty Xiongnu (Huns)—Turkish speaking nomadic warriors known to drink blood from the skulls of their slain enemies. At the apex of their power, in the second century BC, the Huns, mounted on “magical '' war horses, held sway over territories extending from eastern Mongolia to the Aral Sea in central Asia between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Their superb horses became the main reason to construct China’s defensive Great Wall which would be so enormous to be spotted eventually from space by America’s first astronauts.

In 221 BC, the first emperor of United China, Qin Shu Huangdi, had conscripted 700,000 prisoners of war from the six other Warring States his army had conquered “like silkworms devouring a mulberry bush.” Forced laborers worked for 37 years to construct the historic 13,170-mile Great Wall of China.

Ambassador and Mrs. Chester Ronning dance atop the Great Wall —photo by Audrey Ronning Topping

The serpentine miracle of engineering linked the barrier fortifications of all the Warring States to keep the nomadic tribes riding their super horses from invading China. Emperor Qin wielded merciless force to obtain total power. To destroy his political opponents, he murdered 450 Confucian scholars who were buried up to their necks and decapitated. Thousands of forced laborers perished. Their bones were mixed with the mortar earning the wall the grim sobriquet “the world's longest cemetery.”

Painting by Yang Hsien-Min, from Audrey’s cover story National Geographic April 1978

The Great Retreat

More than twenty centuries later, shortly after the dinner Chiang Kai-shek shared with my father in 1949, the Generalissimo left to continue supervision of the Nationalists' retreat from mainland China which had actually begun months, even years before. For the previous 50 years, Formosa had been a Japanese colony. After World War ll, allied commanders transferred authority over Formosa, now Taiwan, back to China.

Han Cheung, a staff reporter for The Taiwan Times, recorded the “massive” relocation of nationalist headquarters from the mainland, called “The Great Retreat.” Some 60 planes flew each day, shuttling between China and Taiwan transporting fuel, weapons, ammunition, and eventually personnel. Over four months, Cheung reported, "1,138 officers, 814 pilots, 2,600 family members, and about 6,000 tons of equipment” and a host of classified documents were all moved. Some 108 ships were loaded with 5,522 crates of ancient artifacts, including 230,000 from the National Palace Museum, ancient treasures from the National Central Museum and precious books from the Beijing Library. Some 600,000 nationalist troops were followed by two million nationalist sympathizer refugees. After December 1948, virtually the entire Nationalist reserve of gold and silver bullion and other foreign exchange were also moved to Taiwan.

Chiang Kai-shek on the steps of Sun Yat Sen’s tomb, leaving Nanjing for the last time

While all this was going on, foreign diplomats could do little more than watch. Before retreating to Taiwan, himself, Generalissimo Chiang reminded Chester again that his sleek, golden-coated, Ferghana steed was no ordinary horse. The stallion had descended from royal Nisean ancestors, known as the mount of nobility.

After their dinner, the Generalissimo wanted to know how as a Canadian airman, my dad had learned to ride such a challenging horse as Wudi. Dad explained that he was not a career airman but had grown up on the Canadian plaines. He had flown the two-winged fighter planes dubbed “Death Crates” in World War I, but during World War II, he was a squadron leader in Royal Canadian Air Force Intelligence. Between the wars he had served as president of Camrose College, physics teacher, choir master, and member of the Canadian parliament representing Alberta. When World War Two ended in 1945, he joined the Canadian Foreign Office. China was his first diplomatic assignment.

“How did you learn to speak Chinese like a native?” asked Chiang. “It was easy,” said dad, “I just had to be born here.”
“Why don’t you look Chinese?”
“Well I lived so long in Canada that I began to look like one of them.”

Chiang was still smiling when Dad explained that his Norwegian-American parents had served as missionaries with the China Inland Mission. “As a child I learned to speak like the Chinese children I grew up with. When my parents were out Christianizing the Chinese, I was in the kitchen being Heathenized by the cook.”

For more background on the Ronnings and early life in China, do see Audrey Ronning Topping's previous two-part Unleashed Voices features:

Unleashed Voices: Terra Cotta Soldiers—My mysterious bamboo junk and the emperor's army

Unleashed Voices: Beijing’s increasingly Forbidden City / Part I

Unleashed Voices: Beijing’s increasingly Forbidden City / Part II

Celestial Horses

After their dinner in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek shared with Chester the history of his beloved Celestial Horse, Wudi.  In 138 BC, when China’s first Han Emperor Wu discovered in the ancient Chinese divination classic known as I Ching, or The Book of Changes, some words that would change the history of China: “Divine horses are due to appear from the Northwest.” The emperor was smitten. Determined to possess the “Divine” horses he commanded, General Zhang Qian, (141 BC-87 BC), commander of the guards at the Imperial Palace to risk the hazardous journey to Central Asia to negotiate peace with the ferocious Huns and trade China’s unique silk brocade for horses. The General set forth with 100 mounted men to obtain the magical chargers from the Huns. When they were 5,000 km northwest of Chang-an (now Xian) in the lush Ferghana Valley in Turkestan (now Uzbekistan), the men were captured and held for 10 years. Still, they must have been treated well by the Huns because General Zhang married and had two sons. His wife, like much of the population, had descended from Alexander the Great.

In 1975, I took this photo of a contemporary statue of General Zhang Qian on his Celestial Horse standing before the Sun Gate that leads to the Yungan Pass and through the Hexi Corridor to the Old Silk Road. The General is flourishing the imperial insignia—a dragon’s head attached to a six-foot long bamboo standard, with three tufts of yak’s tail—considered a talisman of power.

When General Zhang observed the ‘Celestial Horses’ he was stunned. They stood sixteen hands, a hand higher than the Persian Arab horses and were far superior to China’s indigenous breeds in muscle and stamina. The “flying horses” were believed to be supernatural because at full gallop they sweated blood. The phenomenon was documented by Silk Road travelers in the 19th and 20th centuries but why they sweated blood remained a mystery for centuries until someone discovered parasites in the subcutaneous tissues under the skin around the horses’ shoulders that sucked blood into tiny nodules which burst when the horses galloped.

In 104 BC, General Zhang escaped from the Huns and traveled the Silk Road back to the Imperial Court in Chang-an. He described the magnificent steeds to Emperor Wu, namesake of Chiang Kai-shek’s horse Wudi: “Dry, noble head with a slight roman nose, graceful neck with a clear curve, strong well-defined shoulders, long, strong back. Well-muscled croup. The horse carries the rider in a well-balanced smooth manner... They move like snakes and look like dragons.”

Celestial Horses are not a registered breed but have similar lineages to Akhil-Teke horses descended from Turkmenia horses, believed to be one of the four original horse “types” that crossed the Bering Straits from Turkmenistan. They can be compared favorably to Persian Arab horses, another breed of ancient origin.

Both breeds have long, delicate heads with expressive eyes. Both types were renowned cavalry mounts and racehorses for some 3,000 years with a reputation for super stamina and courage. Like the Heavenly horses, the Akhal-Teke’s strength is reputed to be in its diet which is low in bulk but high in protein, including butter and eggs mixed with barley.

The Goddess of Mercy, Kwan Yin, is said to ride a white Celestial Cloud horse. The horses came in many shades of color as shown in an 8th century painting  “Promenade of the Three Beauties” by Li Gonglin, (Sung dynasty, 960-1279 CE). These ladies inspired hair styles comparable to present day “ponytails.”

In those days, superpowers depended on horseback to cement their power. Wars were repeatedly fought among the growing empires in Asia and the art of cavalry required the strongest horses. Emperor Wu ordered General Zhang to return to Ferghana and offer a thousand bolts of the finest silk for a thousand horses to be marched back along the Northern Silk Road to the Han court. That was easier said than done. The King of the Huns in Samarkand considered the horses national treasures. He refused to trade, then declared war.

“The War of Heavenly Horses”

The first war over horses lasted two years, from 104 to 102 BC. Emperor Wu sent General Zhang to lead an army of 40,000 armed men to charge into Ferghana and commandeer the heavenly horses. But he was defeated. A year later he returned with a reinforced cavalry of 60,000. They ambushed the Huns and captured 3,000 of the finest steeds. Gen. Zhang compelled Ferghana to send two Celestial horses each year to Emperor Wu to satisfy his spiritual needs, along with enough seed to grow alfalfa to mix with eggs and nourish the horses.

General Zhang joined a camel caravan carrying supplies and set off along the Old Silk Road to the Emperor’s court in Xian. The stately troop of heavenly horses began a treacherous march along the Silk Road to the Han court in Chang’an (Xian).

They trekked along the edges of the Gobi Desert and through the deadly Taklamakan, known as “The Desert of No Return.”

Tragically only 1,000 of the 3,000 Celestial horses survived. Two thousand of them had succumbed to the blinding sandstorms (burans) known to clog the orifices to strangle both man and beast. The remaining horses were fed and watered by monks in the Buddhist Temple Caves until the camel caravan was strong enough to follow General Zhang Qian, through the challenging Hexi Corridor to Xian, capital of the Han Dynasty.

The 7th Century Buddhist pilgrim, Xuanzang, wrote about the howling dessert winds on the Taklamakan Desert known to drive men mad:

There are no landmarks, travelers pile up bones to mark the way...At times one can hear soughing or sobbing...suddenly one does not know where to turn... many perish. Such are the effects of ghosts and spirits.

Twelve centuries later, in 1271. Marco Polo, with his father and uncle, followed the same route along the Old Silk Road. By the time the Polos returned to Venice, after 27 years in the Imperial Court of Emperor Kublai Khan, 360 flourishing Buddhist cities, once strung like a chain of prayer beads across the forbidding terrain of Central Asia, had been conquered by Arab armies astride their Arabian horses which were comparable to the superior war horses the Huns had used. The Buddhist cities were left in ruins and buried beneath the deadly sands.

Like falling stars emitting light beams centuries after they ceased to exist, the vanquished Buddhist cities continued to spark ghostly legends for a thousand years after they had vanished into the Desert of No Return. Then in 1901 the ruins were discovered by British explorer Aurel Stein and a Swedish archaeologist Sven Hedin. The archeological gold rush began. Great works of art, manuscripts in many languages as well as frescoes and sculptures were discovered. But the price was high.

Ever since the Celestial Horses were presented to Emperor Wu, in 206 BC, their descendants have been top-of-the-line status symbols for Chinese rulers and wealthy officials. Emperors and aristocrats were buried with bronze statues of their favorite horses to accompany them into eternity. In 1969, the burial chamber of an Eastern Han general, who died 2,000 years ago, was discovered in Wuwei, Kansu Province. His tomb contained a treasure trove of bronze and ceramic horses and chariots considered to be the finest artwork of the Han dynasty. Celestial horses became models for some of the finest bronze and tri-colored ceramic statues in the history of art. Tang dynasty horses, on view in museums and antiques galleries, descended from this breed. Today they are still the highest prestige symbols for the elite descendants of Imperial royalty and “classless” communist revolutionaries.

My bronze statue of a Celestial Horse

Twenty centuries after the surviving Celestial horses reached Emperor Wu’s Imperial Court in Xian, a descendant—a Celestial colt named Wudi—was born. In 1945, the three-year-old colt was ceremonially presented to President Chiang Kai-shek and became the Generalissimo’s prized possession. Four years later, shortly before the Nationalists were forced to retreat to Taiwan, my father, assured Chiang he could safely handle his Celestial Horse, but Wudi had different plans.

The first time Chester mounted Chiang’s horse it snorted, bucked fiercely, and sent the Canadian cowboy flying higher than Wudi’s royal predecessors. Ronning’s Viking ancestry was provoked. On the next round Dad clung to Wudi’s luxurious mane until the horse yielded and sat down. But the battle wasn’t over yet. Next  turn, the Celestial horse acted pleasant but outsmarted Chester by deliberately galloping under a low branch leaving the arrogant foreign devil sprawled under the tree. Chester then had an epiphany. He decided to play the game that had worked with diplomats and Canadian horses alike. He bribed the heavenly horse with delicious apples. It worked. Wudi’s eyes lit up. He snorted and smiled as only happy horses can. The Canadian diplomat soon made peace with China’s chief status symbol. Chester later admitted that the Chinese Celestial horse had given him the smoothest ride he had ever experienced on any bucking bronco in Canada.

At midnight April 20, 1949 Mao Zedong signed an “Order to the Army for the country-wide advance.” The Communist armies crowded aboard thousands of junks, to cross the Yangtze and march towards Nanjing. They received only token resistance. In Nanjing Commander Lin Tsun had defected to the Communists and his naval squadron turned their guns on Nationalist troops. Chiang Kai-shek’s whole garrison abandoned the city. The municipal police fled with them.

On April 23,1949, Chester and Topping, became eye-witnesses to the fall of Nanjing and the end of China’s Civil War. At dawn, Top was jarred awake by gunfire and explosions. Pandemonium swept the streets of Nanjing. He jumped into his jeep, picked up Bill Kuan, a young Chinese reporter with Agence France Press and headed toward the fires. They were halted by a line of eight armed soldiers pointing rifles at them. Their leader said they were the last Nationalist sentries in Nanjing and needed a ride to get out the South Gate. They leaped on Top’s jeep, clinging to the hood and hanging onto the canvas top. Top took them to the huge stone gate and watched in astonishment as the residual soldiers of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist army dumped their uniforms before disappearing into the darkness.

Top and Kuan turned to drive back. There was a shout of halt in Chinese. From each side of the road, under the plain trees, two soldiers with rifles aimed at them, converged on the jeep. ‘Who are you? And what are you doing?’ said one. ‘I am a correspondent with the American Associated Press.’ ‘American, American!’  the soldier exclaimed, shining the flashlight in Top’s face. ‘Do you know who we are?’ ‘ No. Who are you?’ ‘We are soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army.’ They were General Chen Yi’s troops, the point of the first Communist column to enter Nanjing.

When they reached the telegraph office, Kuan and Top flipped a coin to determine who would file first. Top lost. Bill sent a three word flash, “Reds take Nanjing.” Top’s 66-word dispatch followed. Immediately after it went out, the Communist troops severed the land line between Nanjing and Shanghai. When Kuan’s flash reached AFP in Paris, the editors waited for additional details which did not come until morning when a radio transmission opened from Nanjing. The delay denied Kuan a world beat on the fall of the Nationalist Capital, but Top’s own lengthier dispatch went immediately on the AP wires. By the time the sun came up over Purple Mountain, the Communists had occupied Chiang Kai-shek’s capital, and Top had a world scoop.

Top drove his jeep to the Canadian Embassy to pick up dad. They watched in amazement as mobs of shabbily dressed looters swarmed up from the slums of Fu Tze Miao to invade the palatial residents of Nationalist officials to grab abandoned treasures. Chester observed, with a twinge of sentimentality as cheering throngs crashed through the windows of Chiang Kai-shek’s Heavenly Palace and carried out the very Ming Dynasty red-wood chairs he had occupied the night he dined with the Generalissimo and promised to exercise his Celestial Horse.

Top and dad then drove to Nanjing’s massive Northwest Gate and watched the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) march into Nanjing. The fires had brought a forced march through the Northwest Gate. The officer ordered Top to drive back into the city. He dropped off dad and went to write his story. Three soldiers entered his office as he sat writing on the typewriter. They asked his servant, Liu, what he did.

“Oh, he sends messages to the United States,” Liu said casually. “What does he say in these messages?” Top spirits sank as Liu replied, “He reports about everything.”

That did it. Top was arrested. In a few minutes the house was surrounded by soldiers with fixed bayonets. He could not leave, nor could his cook go to the market for food. Top sent a message to the bureau chief in Shanghai, “Boy Scouts posted at front door.” When my father heard of Top’s plight, he delivered food packages through the barbed wire fence and tried to explain that Top was not a spy. After a week, the sentries vanished without explanation. Top’s story led world newspapers. I read his stories in the Vancouver Sun where I was attending the University of British Columbia. I had joined the third generation of Ronnings to be kicked out of China. I always wondered why we kept coming back.

On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong stood at the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Beijing and proclaimed The People’s Republic of China. He called for the unification of all China. Two months later, on Dec. 7, 1949, Chiang Kai-shek proclaimed Taipei the temporary capital of the Republic of China. He continued to assert his government was the sole legitimate authority of all China. By that time the Generalissimo’s Celestial horse, Wudi, was in Taiwan with his rightful owner. In 1971, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek joined his ancestors. His last words to his son Jiang Jing-guo were: “Don’t let the Tiger go.”

On September 9, 1976, it was the turn of Mao Zedong to join his ancestors. His last words to a mysterious God were: “The world is yours, but it’s also ours; in the last analysis, however, it’s yours.”

In 1983, the Governor of Gansu Province, nestled between Mongolia and Xinjiang presented my father, Ambassador Chester Ronning with one of the first reproductions of a Celestial Flying Horse (now in the collection of his son, my brother, Harmon Ronning).

In 1983, the Governor of Gansu Province, nestled between Mongolia and Xinjiang presented my father, Ambassador Chester Ronning with one of the first reproductions of a Celestial Flying Horse (now in the collection of his son, my brother, Harmon Ronning).