The Asiatic Fathers of America

(This lecture will be in English.)

Is there evidence that ancient America was discovered and colonized long before Christopher Columbus?

In 1972 the late Dr. Hendon M. Harris, Jr. made a startling discovery. While searching for Chinese collectibles he came across an ancient Asian map book containing a world map showing a land mass labeled "Fu Sang" to the east of China, land that we today call America. After years of research and his discovery of the existence of twenty-nine other supporting maps, Dr. Harris published a 796 page book titled The Asiatic Fathers of America.  In that book, Dr. Harris contended that by 2200 B.C. Chinese had reached the Americas.

In 2003, with the sudden world-wide interest in this topic, the family took the maps to the Library of Congress. For three years the maps were there while being studied. On May 16, 2005 Dr. Harris' daughter, Charlotte Harris Rees, gave a speech at the Library of Congress about the early arrival of Chinese to America. In 2006, Mrs. Rees published a condensed, easy reading version of Dr. Harris' original text. This abridged version of Dr. Harris' book contains several never before released pictures of the Harris map collection. The book also contains a brief biography about Dr. Harris' unusual life. In 2008 Mrs. Rees published a book based upon her own research entitled Secret Maps of the Ancient World.

At the invitation of the Renwen Society of China Institute, Mrs. Rees will give a lecture on Saturday, September 26, 2:00-3:30 on both her and her father’s books. Her talk will bring together many academic studies and medical research revealing evidences of very early arrival of Chinese to America.

Dr. Harris, a third generation missionary, was born in Kaifeng, China to American parents. He learned both Chinese and English at a very early age. He was familiar with the Chinese.

Mrs. Charlotte Harris Rees is an independent researcher and a graduate of Columbia International University. As a child Mrs. Rees lived for four years in Taiwan then later for a year in Hong Kong where her parents were missionaries.  In recent years she has made several trips to China. She has appeared in the United States on television, National Public Radio, in numerous news articles and has given speeches – including at the Library of Congress, the University of Maryland, the University of London, and in Beijing - about her family’s map collection and the early arrival of Chinese to America.

Secret Maps of the Ancient World is Mrs. Rees’s third book.  It is endorsed by Dr. Hwa-Wei Lee, retired Chief of the Asian Division of the Library of Congress, and by New York Times best selling author, Gavin Menzies (1421: The Year China Discovered the World). Secret Maps of the Ancient World was listed in fall 2008 as a new publication by WCILCOS (The World Confederation of Institutes and Libraries for Chinese Overseas Studies.) The book also appeared in March 2009 at the National Library Show for American College and Research Libraries in Seattle (USA) and at the London (England) Book Fair in April 2009. Her web site is www.HarrisMaps.com.