Introduction

How a Third Generation American Family Legend Returned to Jiangsu China in Honor of their Father

“Dikes?” incredulously she asked, “What do you know about building dikes?” Agnes Woods Harnsberger ,my grandmother, asked her husband Lyt, both China based, Southern Presbyterian missionaries.

“Nothing,” Lyt answered.“But we are going to build a really good one.”

And he did build a great dike, recognized along with his friend and partner General Wang by the Nationalist Government as one the finest reconstruction projects in all China. It was probably the best Grand Canal dike ever built,  at least by a preacher.

My father Hutch often recounted the story of his parent’s kitchen dialogue and the family legend of the 1931 killer China typhoon and levee break floods. In his four son’s eyes, this Biblical sized flood was just another of their father’s delightful “Big Fish” stories, lovingly exaggerated, told with great enthusiasm but clearly blown out of proportion. No one ever believed it was all true. In the final analysis however, I have come to learn that the 1931 China flood was far bigger than can be grasped, indeed the 20^th century’s worst water related disaster inundating 70,000 square miles and killing millions. Hutch’s great flood saga turned out to be all true and more. It was above all others the single worst water related disaster of the 20th century, not just an aging father’s boyhood memories stretched in time and lore.

Hutch longed to return to Jiangsu China for the last 20 years of his life. He wanted to go home. Born in Taizhou (NW of Shanghai approximately 100 miles) in 1924 and fled to Virginia before WWII, Hutch like many “mishkids” always knew China was his home and to the houseboat on the canals is where he wanted to return. He had never been able to go back until the end of the 20^th century when China opened. It was his last desire see restore the story of his father’s humanitarian service to Jiangsu. Hutch began his flood research in the late 1980s before Google writing letters to Foreign charities to discover which was the entity his father Lyt worked for in regular famine relief. Seven years ago Hutch found missionary reports at the Presbyterian Missionary Historical Society.

In following the story I also came to know that my father’s deep motivation resonated from a place that all sons share, a place that sparks a universal desire to honor their fathers. Upon Hutch’s death in April 2005, the story fell into my hands and seized me, gripping me like nothing I had ever known. As each layer was uncovered, I found that beneath I found life, belief in human beings, struggle for the needy and ultimately purpose for living. The story has kept me company every day since Hutch departed and has not left me since. And like life reinventing itself, the story will now go on as it moves through the hearts and minds of each person who comes into contact with it.

I did not know it then but I had found my “yuan fen”, the Chinese expression for finding one’s positive destiny. There was never a choice; I had to see my father’s story of his father to its rightful end.

Today is the 21st of October 2005, I’m flying back to San Francisco from Gaoyou meeting with the exhibit planning committee, Vice Mayor Ni Wencai and Mr Gen head of the Water Conservancy, having seen what my father foresaw take final shape. It’s simply magical to be the instrument completing the father’s last wish. Everyone should have this opportunity and get this feeling, but I am certain very few ever will.

The Gaoyou City government completed plans last week in partnership with the Harnsberger family to open a new 1931 flood museum at year’s end, 75 years after the destruction of the city. Over the course of the last years, I had been uncovering new historical materials filling in the blanks with photos. Gaoyou only had 2000 words in their history of the flood and none of it mentioned a foreigner. After receiving copies of our family photos, Nanjing Archives photos, Hutch’s speech and writings, my summaries of the oral history, photos of the levee breaks by Charles Lindbergh all translated painstakingly to Chinese by my friend and research partner Shu Xiaojuan, the Gaoyou team had caught fire; the story crossed over from ours to theirs.

I ran across several Charles Lindbergh aerial photos of the Gaoyou levee breaks after googling late one May evening, several weeks after Hutch’s memorial service. These photos, saved for 70 years were located in the possession of Damaris Peck Reynolds (93). Lindbergh had left the photos behind at Damaris’ father’s house (Willis Peck was the US Ambassador to China’s Nationalist Government) in Nanjing where he stayed in 1931.

Before leaving Gaoyou on this my second trip in 2005 , they gave me a VCD of some footage regarding plans for the exhibit in a locally produced Chinese TV documentary. When I watched it, the language I could not understand, but deep in my heart, I understood absolutely everything. Great wonder came over me as I saw my father’s story being spread like fire jumping from tree to tree, told by one Chinese to another as it returned to its homeland. It is a feeling of awe that has not left me since.

In October 2001, our family returned to Jiangsu Province and brought Hutch to find his birth home still standing (it has since been demolished for a big church in Taizhou). Hutch gave a speech in the Huayin Christian Church, with a congregation of over 3000, one of the single largest churches in all of China. This thriving modern Chinese Christian community grew upon the foundation laid by the Presbyterian missions from the late 1800s which included Hutch’s maternal Grandfather James Baker Woods and his brothers Henry, Sam, Edgar, Pearl Bucks father Absalom Sydenstricker and Ruth Graham, the wife of evangelist Billy Graham and daughter of L. Nelson Bell. Hutch stood before the Huiyin church and told the story of the 1931 flood. No one had any idea what he was talking about as the story has slipped from history.

This was the last time I heard my father tell the whole story and write it all down. Here are his words from that day.

The Dike Re-building Project at Gaoyou City, China, 1932

(Hutch’s “Ping An!” Speech)

Taken from Comments Made by Dr. Hutch Harnsberger, PhD in the Sunday Service of Huaiyin Christian Church in Huaiyin City, Jiangsu, China October 14, 2001

In August 1931, a fierce, Category 5 typhoon (Tai Feng in Chinese, meaning “big wind”) stalled over Jiangsu Province in China for several days. I was young boy of 8 years old living in Taizhou City, northwest of Shanghai 200 km, my home town. It poured down immense, unprecedented amounts of rain. For the first time in many years, water flowed over the top of many dikes which in China for centuries have held back the great rivers from disaster with very marginal success.

Along the Grand Canal at Gaoyou City, there were dikes which held not only the canal but which retained Lake Gaoyou. The Gaoyou dike broke in numerous places and about 3000 meters of a 30 foot high damn were swept away in a devastating flood. A city of about 200,000, Gaoyou was destroyed and tens of thousands perished.

Severe flooding spread about 150 kilometers east to the Pacific Ocean. The Chinese government was unable to cope with such a monumental disaster. The 1931 China Flood may have been a “1000 year” disaster. We have confirmed that it is classified as the “Number 1 natural disaster of the 20^th Century:” About 3.7 million Chinese died from drowning, disease and starvation! My brother Jim and I remember standing on top of the wall at Taizhou City, where we lived then about 100 kilometers to the southeast, and seeing our city completely surrounded by muddy floodwater all the way to the horizon!

My father “Lyt” immediately took leave of his work as an itinerant minister in many towns near Taizhou and went to Shanghai to search for funds to rebuild this key, broken dike. There he successfully secured the required funds from the China-Foreign Famine Relief Committee and two wealthy Chinese friends.

When my father returned home, we remember our mother asking him: “What do you know about building dikes?”

My father said, “Not much, but we are going to build a really good one.”

My mother, Agnes was very well adapted to living and working in China, for she was born and raised right here in Huaiyin City. Our family then traveled to the dike construction site at Gaoyou City on our man-powered, 17-meter Chinese houseboat and lived on it there for about a year during the massive dike project. So, we have some vivid memories and a few, surviving photographs to share.

My father persuaded retired Chinese general Wang (then in his 80’s), who had a lifetime experience with dike building and management, to help plan and execute the project. He recruited engineers, draftsmen, clerks and work supervisors. A workforce of about 15,000, motivated, disciplined and diligent Chinese was organized. They did all the rebuilding of a pounded-earth dike, about 10 meters high and about 30 meters wide at the base. Many wood piles and a large quantity of Australian wheat flour were barged in. It was all hand-labor, for no power equipment was used even for the pile-driving and rock-facing on the lake side. All workers were housed, fed and paid daily and well cared for.

The dike re-building project was completed in about a year. Project cost was kept under the budgeted amount. My father returned about 10% of the original funds to the Relief Committee in Shanghai. They said it was the first time in 100 years that had happened! After completion of the dike project, my father returned to his Christian ministry work.

So, the lives and the livelihoods of up to 5  million Chinese were saved by the prompt re-building of the dike at Gaoyou City. Just two days ago, my family found and was thrilled to stand on that dike. We were the only people taking photographs of - a dike!

The woman I had just met at lunch said, “Pretty good account of your parents’ work in China!”

Jesus teaches us that when ever we work hard and effectively to benefit others, even those we do not know, we are following the kind of life He wants us to live.

Ping An (“peace” in Chinese) to you all. Ping An! Ping An!

Next: The floods hit Gaoyou >

Content Copyright © 2005 Steve Harnsberger ¨ Web Design by Charles Day

Any reproduction without written consent of the author is strictly prohibited. ¨  All photos used with permission.

Special thanks to Hutch, Jim, Xiaojuan, Ni Wencai, Damaris Peck, Giles Harnsberger and John Aengus Burke

Dedication: Dedicated in honor of my father Hutch, who instigated the return of the forgotten flood story to Gaoyou and gave me the force to do anything that could be imagined. Ping An!