President David Skorton announced yesterday that the University will be giving China back a collection of rare fungi that was originally smuggled to Cornell nearly 70 years ago.
In the 1920s, Shu Chun Teng was China’s premier expert on fungi after studying mycology at Cornell. To preserve Teng’s specimens from destruction following the 1937 Japanese invasion of China, 2,278 of the specimen packets were smuggled by ox cart to Indochina and then by sea to the United States, eventually arriving at Cornell in 1940, according to the Associated Press.