Children of Asia

Edited from footage taken during the AMNH Faunthorpe-Vernay Indian Expedition to India, Nepal, and Burma, 1922-1923, the AMNH First Asiatic Zoological Expedition to Yunnan, China, 1916-1917, and the AMNH Third Asiatic Expedition to China and Mongolia, 1921-1930. Agnes G. Kelly Saunders created Children of Asia by editing footage focusing on children found in films taken during three AMNH expeditions to Asia, the First and Third Asiatic Expeditions, and the Faunthorpe-Vernay Indian Expedition. From the Third Asiatic Expedition are seen Mongol children and adults pictured before their yurts, variations on the elaborate Mongol headdress, Mongols listening to the expedition staff's gramophone, the expedition headquarters in Peking (now Beijing), and Chinese children tending smaller children. From the First Asiatic Zoological Expedition the crowded streets of Tali-fu in Yunnan are pictured. (The First Asiatic Zoological Expedition and the Third Asiatic Expedition are part of what is now known collectively as the Central Asiatic Expeditions.) From the Faunthorpe-Vernay Expedition there are portraits of Indian adults and children, children and their pet dogs, boy and girls whittling sticks with sickle-shaped knives, and an elephant carrying a pot at the end of its trunk. In Burma, young girls dance before an enclosure of musical gongs. Burmese people in their thatched homes on stilts are pictured, as well as children fetching water. The captions of this film are written in rhyme and the picture was clearly made for young children to teach them how other children around the world look, live, and play.