Charlotte Harris Rees has appeared on television and National Public Radio in the United States and Canada and in numerous international news articles about her family’s map collection and her research concerning the very early arrival of Chinese to America.
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 University (Beijing); University of British Columbia; Zheng He Symposium (Melaka, Malaysia); Switzerland; the University of Maryland; City University of New York; Seton Hall University; the Chinese Historical Society (Los Angeles); and the Royal Geographical Society (London and Hong Kong).
In 1972 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 text contended that by 2200 B.C. Chinese had reached the Americas by sea.
Since early 2003, Rees, an independent researcher, a retired federal employee, and an honors graduate of Columbia International University, has diligently studied the possibility of very early arrival of Chinese to America. Her mentor, Dr. Cyclone Covey, has researched this China/America connection for 60 years.
In 2003 Rees and her brother took the Harris Map Collection to the Library of Congress where it remained for three years while being studied. In 2006 she published an abridged version of her father’s, The Asiatic Fathers of America: Chinese Discovery and Colonization of Ancient America. Her Secret Maps of the Ancient World came out in 2008. In late 2011 she released Chinese Sailed to America Before Columbus: More Secrets from the Dr. Hendon M. Harris, Jr. Map Collection. Her books are listed by World Confederation of Institutes and Libraries for Chinese Overseas Studies. This is her first travelogue.
Her father, Dr. Harris, a third generation Baptist missionary, was born in Kaifeng, China. As a child Rees lived for four years in Taiwan then later for a year in Hong Kong. In recent years she has taken several trips to China. Her home is in Virginia.