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372.
[[underline]] CHAPTER XVIII. RETURN TO CHINA: NEOLITHIC SITE IN SOUTHWESTERN SHANSI. [[/underline]]

[[underline]] Return to China [[/underline]]
  On January 8, 1930, I again arrived in Peking--or Peiping as it was again called now that the capital of China had, after 5 centuries, been returned to Nanking.  With me was Mrs. Bishop (the Miss Furscott of the preceding pages), who was to resume handling the finances and business details of the expedition.
  Superficially, we found the situation greatly improved and stabilized.  While the new government had not, it was true, yet had time to consolidate its authority over the entire country, there seemed no reason why, as soon as the frost had left the ground, we should not resume the fieldwork already begun at An-yang (on this [[underline]] cf. [[/underline]] pp. 196 [[underline]] sq. [[/underline]] , and pp. 370 [[underline]] sq. [[/underline]] ).
  Accordingly I sought the advice and official support of my old friend the newly appointed American Minister, Mr. Nelson T. Johnson (later, in 1935, advanced to the rank of Ambassador).  For his sympathy with and interest in our enterprise were, I already knew, no whit less cordial and sincere than those of his predecessors (on the attitude of the latter [[underline]] cf. [[/underline]] pp. 3, 4, 9, 78, 229, 259); and of this I now received additional confirmation.  Hence I at once entered into negotiations with the National Research Institute (soon to be renamed the Academia Sinica) for a definite, equitable, and mutually satisfactory agreement for further coöperation between our respective organizations.
  This I soon found however would, in the existing state of Chinese public feeling, be by no means an easy matter.  For not only did our former difficulties of various sorts still persist; but they had in many ways