The Peking Man Is Missing

by Claire Taschdjian

In the 1920s, on a hill near Peking (now Beijing), a team of scientists discovered a huge cache of human bones, some more than half a million years old. Collectively dubbed ?Peking Man,? they were one of the most important finds in the history of paleontology. And in 1941, in the chaos of World War II they disappeared. No one knows what happened, but there are plenty of theories, many with political implications. Claire Taschdjian?s speculation as to what might have become of the priceless fossils could represent just another theory, but for one intriguing fact: Claire Taschdjian was one of the last people in the world known to have seen Peking Man. (With newly-commissioned material on the true story of the Peking Man.)

Genres: China, Mystery, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Archaeology, Anthropology, Asia

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Claire Hirschberg was born in 1914 into a middle-class Jewish family in Berlin. In 1934 the family moved to China, first living in Shanghai and then in Nanking, a city they had to evacuate after the Japanese invasion of 1937. In 1938 the Hirschbergs settled in Peking, where Claire worked as secretary to Franz Weidenreich, a German anthropologist and the director of the Cenozoic Research Laboratory, which was closely involved in the Peking Man excavation. She was still there in 1941, when the bones of the Peking Man were packed up, and may have been one of the last people in the world to ever see the Peking Man bones. In 1944 Claire Hirschberg married Edgar Taschdjian, an Austrian-born Armenian with an Italian passport, and in 1948 the two of them moved to Chicago, where Edgar Taschdjian had a teaching job. Claire and Edgar Taschdjian taught at the St. Francis College in Brooklyn; she retired in the mid-1970s and wrote The Peking Man Is Missing, her first novel, at the age of 63. Taschdjian died in 1998.

Reviews

[Shomeret · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book that deals with real prehistoric fossilized bones at a museum that had gone missing. The fictional aspect in this novel is that they were stolen. Their value is for scientific study. This was in 1941 and the Japanese were occupying China. I occasionally became confused about how the characters were inter-related. We learn who took the fossils and their location long before the book ends, but there is suspense due to a gang of criminals who think they can find the fossils, sell them and become rich.

In a postscript, we are told that no one ever found out what happened to these fossils. The plot of the novel is the author's speculation about what might have happened to them. I found the resolution ironic, but also disappointing. The cover annoyed me because it's exploitative and has nothing to do with the plot.

I was given this book for review, but I didn't think there was any issue oriented substance to provide sufficient content for a lengthy piece on my blog. So this brief Goodreads review is the only one I am writing. I gave it three stars for the suspense aspect and what I learned about this period of Chinese history. There was a great deal of chaos and confusion in China at this time. It wasn't a pleasant read, but it was somewhat interesting.

[Cat. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The bones of the plot are good, and the historical facts of the Peking Man disappearance at the beginning of WWII, but the writing is a little stilted and dated. Still, I read till the very end. Another great historical real-life mystery here, one that I'd never really paid attention to. What did happen to the fossils after December 4, 1941?

[Steve Shilstone · Rating 3 out of 5]

In spite of awkward dialogue, this is a rather well spun yarn.

[Jerry Edward Stephens · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book might actually be a decent narrative explanation about the Peking Man fossils and the intriguing way they have been long lost. It is not, however, a very good novel about the Peking Man fossils and the very intriguing story about how they have been long lost. Why the difference? The story is actually an interesting tale with a bunch of dramatic twists and turns to it. This is just not a very good novelized explanation. First of all, the characters talk in a terribly stilted manner. Their conversations are so often unbelievable. The most saving grace in the novel is that the explanations of all the events remains a compelling tale. The book is helped in that the author had first hand experience in China during this period. So do read this "novel" for a terribly plausible idea about the Peking Man fossils and how they might have disappeared.

[Judith · Rating 3 out of 5]

The factual update at the end was as interesting, if not more so, than the book itself.

[Victoria Grusing · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting.

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started this in 2019 or earlier. It dragged. I only finished it out of stubbornness.

[Melissa Embry · Rating 4 out of 5]

If anyone can come close to guessing what happened to the fossils of Peking Man that disappeared during the Japanese occupation of China during World War II, it would be Claire Taschdjian, who billed her 1977 volume, "The Peking Man is Missing," as fiction. But consider her credentials for knowing the truth of the famous fossil disappearance. She worked in the Peking Union Medical College which housed the fossils following their discovery in the 1930's, with many of the people involved in handling them, whom she includes, with only thinly-veiled pseudonyms (Jesuit-scientist Father Teilhard de Chardin; the discoverer of the first Peking Man skull, Dr. W.C. Pei; and director of the medical college's Cenozoic Research Laboratory, Franz Weidenreich); and finally, that she (and her fictionalized alter-ego, Katrin "Kathy" Ewers) helped pack the fossils for shipment to the United States immediately prior to Japan's declaration of war against the U.S.

Add to that Taschdjian's own experience of the Japanese occupation as one of China's foreign residents and the reader has to wonder -- and fear -- that the end she devises for the fossils in her book may be all too close to the truth.

One of Kathy Ewers' duties as secretary to the director is to conduct tours for visitors to the research laboratory. But two of those visitors, including a young marine guard at the U.S. embassy, seem to have a more than scientific interest in the fossils. How much, exactly, are they worth in dollars and cents, he asks.

"They're priceless," Kathy explains. "You can't express their value in terms of money."

But he persist. "I'll bet there isn't a museum in the West or in Japan that wouldn't give its eyeteeth to have these prize specimens in its collection."

It's the germ of a shell game that will eventually switch the fossils in 1941 from their carefully packed crates to a U.S. marine's footlocker that can expect to escape a customs search, to a diplomat's private luggage to the possible possession of a woman who surfaced briefly in New York 20 years later, only to disappear herself without a trace.

As fiction, Taschdjian's narrative would be more compelling if it followed a single character's story more closely. And the complicated conspiracy and missed connections strain the credulity of even the most dedicated readers of thrillers and crime fiction. But Taschdjian's speculations remain fascinating. And her portraits are compelling. Not the least of these is the Irish-Japanese Kempetai officer whose brutal interrogations failed to uncover the truth about Peking Man's whereabouts. And led to his own, perhaps too well-deserved, fate, leaving behind the question: where in the world is Peking Man?

[Pascale · Rating 3 out of 5]

A superior thriller due to its being based on an actual mystery of some scientific and political importance. The author has the distinction of having seen the human bones found by archeologists near Beijing in the 1920s, since she worked as a secretary for the foundation in charge of examining and preserving these priceless human remains. These treasures disappeared in 1941, and nobody knows whether they were destroyed by accident or by design, or possibly looted or stolen. The culprits could be the Japanese, the Americans, or the Chinese themselves. Obviously this riddle never stopped obsessing Taschdjian, who eventually decided to suggest one possible explanation for the vanished bones in the medium of a murder mystery. This also gave her the chance to describe the peculiar atmosphere in China during WWII, both before and after Pearl harbor. The narrative is very well handled, and it's a pity it ends rather lamely, with an accidental death which is plausible but not too satisfactory as a plot device. Still, this is a highly readable book, relatively free of the clichés of the genre.

[Mary Warnement · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mystery speculating about what happened in a real historical moment isn't unusual. Written by a participant, less usual. Claire Taschdjian worked at the Peking Union Medical College for the professor in charge of studying the fossils known as Peking Man. In 1941, the plan to move the fossils to the US for safekeeping after the Japanese had invaded China and war with the US loomed--that plan backfired like a Greek tragedy. The fossils went missing and haven't been seen since the Marines took them to deliver to a ship. I enjoyed reading about conditions in China at that time. I've read about Teilhard de Chardin's anthropological research, a memoir of a man who married a Chinese noble woman at the onset of the cultural revolution--I wish I could recall his name or the title (was it a NYRB classic, yes, Peking Days by David Kidd)--and Hand-Grenade Practice in Peking which described it in the mid-1970s. I'll probably stay in Peking a little longer and start Midnight in Peking next.

[Scilla · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is based on the real mystery of the disappearance of the Peking Man fossils at the time the Japanese took over China in 1941. The book is a novel about what might have happened. There are a lot of sleezy characters and a few gullible ones. The author surmises that a group of drug dealers use a young woman working at the Paleoanatomy Laboratory, and her friend, an American service man are duped into helping as the bones are about to be shipped to the US for safe keeping. The plot is complicated by the death of one of the bad guys and the Japanese takeover of the US military. A Chinese double agent who also worked at the Lab chases the bones to NY city, but is foiled at the end.

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hesitate to call this a mystery because the reader is the only one who always knows where Peking Man is. But suspenseful, and a page-turner - yes. I could not stop thinking about it all day. I loved everything about it from the description of occupied Peking (Beijing), to the variety of characters and what motivated them, to the final "resolution" of Peking Man. This was such a fun book, and made even more interesting by knowing that it was to some degree based on actual events.

[Gloria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting fictional account of how the 600,00 year old bones of Peking Man might have gone missing (after they really did in WW2 - and were never found.) I became interested in the characters and think that things certainly could have happened this way.....or any number of other ways..... Enjoyed reading this and hearing some accounts of life in China, relating to my mother's experience living in there in the 30s and 40s.

[Jeanette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read for anthropology fans who also like a good mystery. Although fiction, they story is based on facts and written by a woman who was there in the last days of chaos when Peking Man truly did disappear.

[Susan Bogart · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow--was this a disappointment! Subject is fascinating, but the book is dreadful. Don't waste your time--I didn't.

[Kamas Kirian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved the subject matter, even though the execution was a little lacking. The ending is a little bit of a letdown as well. It wasn't bad, but it could have been Oh So Much Better.

[Beagle44 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but all in all the background that it was written against made the story more interesting.

[John]

mystery