Gyanyin goddess: two bronze figures – two different stories

he first of these stories is connected with the name of Kazimierz Grochowski (1873 – 1937), the forgotten Polish geologist, archeologist, traveller and writer, to whom I owe my long-standing interest in the history of East Asia. He was a director of the Polish Gymnasium in Harbin (North-East China, Manchuria at that time) where I was born and where I received my secondary and high-school education. Grochowski also used to teach us the history and geography of the Far East and was a patron of our Polish Oriental Circle (Polskie Koło Wschodoznawcze), which he established in the frame of his educational work. I would like to recall a short outline of his biography. As a student in Lwow, he took part in anti-Russian activities and under the threat of arrest was forced to escape to Cracow (then under the Austrian annexation) and finally moved to Leoben and Freiberg where he received his higher education and a title of mining engineer. He came to Vladivostok in 1906 and started his professional career in the Trans-Ussurian Territory (Ussurijskij Kraj) and on Sakhalin Island. As a gold prospector in an international enterprise – The Upper Amur Gold Mining Co., he made four great expeditions in 1910 – 1914 across the little known regions of East Siberia (which belonged to China before 1860)1). Grochowski took part in numerous geological and archeological expeditions in Mongolia (1914 – 1916), in Uriankhai (present day Tuva, 1917 – 1918) and in the North-East China (1920 – 1934). After the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, he settled in Harbin and in the following years undertook a series of geological and archeological expeditions to the most remote regions of Manchuria. He died in Harbin in 1937 after a two year sojourn in Poland.