China Seminar

Friday, Nov 7, 12:00 noon

Tokioka Room (Moore Hall 319)

"Did Ancient Chinese Explore America? My Journey Through the Rocky Mountains to Find Answers"

Charlotte Harris Rees, Independent Researcher

Abstract: A Chinese classic, the Shan Hai Jing, reportedly from 2000 BC claimed travels to the ends of the earth. However, today many, while accepting the antiquity of this account, believe it was just mythology. But was it?

Testing the hypothesis that the Shan Hai Jing descriptions of the Eastern Mountains were actual surveys of North America, Charlotte Harris Rees, author of books about early Chinese exploration, followed an alleged 1100 mile Chinese trek along the eastern slope of the US Rocky Mountains. The Chinese account, if false, should have been easy to disprove. However, Rees has been able to validate over 90 percent of what the Shan Hai Jing stated was at each location on the journey.

Recently along that route another researcher found the names of two Shang Dynasty kings on a boulder with very old patina. That petroglyph, shown in Charlotte’s presentation, has been validated by a world renown expert in ancient Chinese script and dated to sometime between 1200 and 200 BC.

In her PowerPoint presentation Charlotte candidly shares her initial doubts then her search and discoveries. As she takes the audience along on her journey, she weaves together history, subtle humor, academic studies, and many photographs to tell a compelling story.

About the speaker: Charlotte Harris Rees has appeared on television and National Public Radio in the United States and Canada and in numerous international news articles. She has given many presentations including at the Library of Congress (Washington, DC); The National Library of China (Beijing); Stanford University; the University of London; Tsinghua and Peking Universities (Beijing); University of British Columbia; Zheng He Symposiums (Melaka, Malaysia, Washington, DC, and Shanghai); Macau University; the University of Maryland; Seton Hall University; the Chinese Historical Society (Los Angeles); Switzerland; and Royal Geographical Societies (London and Hong Kong) about her family’s old maps and her research concerning the very early arrival of Chinese to America.

Her book, Did Ancient Chinese Explore America? My Trip Through the Rocky Mountains to Find Answers (2013, is a travelogue which follows an alleged Shan Hai Jing journey. It presents evidence of Chinese exploration in America starting 2000 BC. Previously Rees wrote Secret Maps of the Ancient World (2008, 2009) and New World Secrets on Ancient Asian Maps (2011, 2014).

In 2006 she published an abridged version of her father’s, The Asiatic Fathers of America: Chinese Discovery and Colonization of Ancient America. Her books are listed by the World Confederation of Institutes and Libraries for Chinese Overseas Studies (WCILCOS) and are endorsed by Dr. Hwa-Wei Lee, former Chief of the Asian Division of the Library of Congress.

Mrs. Rees is an independent researcher and a graduate of Columbia International University. In1972 her father, Dr. Hendon Harris, Jr. (1916-1981), found in an antique shop in Korea an ancient Asian map which led him to write a book of almost 800 pages that contended early arrival of Chinese to America by sea. In 2003 Mrs. Rees and her brother took the Harris Map Collection to the Library of Congress where it remained for three years while being studied. Dr. Cyclone Covey, History Professor Emeritus, Wake Forest University, (PhD from Stanford), who for over 60 years has studied the early history of America and the Chinese connection, has been her research mentor.

Rees’s father, Dr. Hendon M. Harris, Jr., a third generation Baptist missionary, was born in Kaifeng, China. As a child Rees lived for four years in Taiwan then later in Hong Kong where her parents served. In recent years she made several trips to China. Her home is in Virginia. Her web site is www.AsiaticFathers.com.

Event Sponsor
Center for Chinese Studies and Confucius Institute at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Mānoa Campus

More Information
(808) 956-8891, china@hawaii.edu

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