On March 31, 1934, Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906-2001), Smith College Class of 1928, made headlines as the first female recipient of the National Geographic Society’s Hubbard Gold Medal, “honor[ing] outstanding explorations or discoveries.” Lindbergh, the first licensed female glider pilot in the USA, was recognized for her work alongside her husband, the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, in mapping 40,000 miles of skytrails, spanning five continents.
These exploratory flights inspired Lindbergh’s much-acclaimed memoir, North to the Orient. After her death, one of her heirs donated her manuscripts and artifacts from her travels to the Smith College Sophia Smith Archives, in recognition of Anne’s history with the College.
Anne’s drafts focus entirely on her descriptions of flying over China, which had been struck by a catastrophic flood. As Anne and her husband were mapping out airspace above China at the time, the National Flood Relief Commission of China requested them to chart the affected areas. The 1931 flood devastated a large portion of Northern China, perhaps due to an unusually large amount of rain following a two year period of drought from 1928 to 1930. Estimates of the numbers killed vary from 3.7 million to 4 million with an additional 24 to 54 million people affected by its aftermath (1). Many of these later victims died of starvation, cholera, typhoid fever, small-pox, and dysentery.
The area affected by flood waters extended an estimated 8,000 square miles, largely north of the Yangtze River, the “east part alone of this area equal in size to Massachusetts” and, as Anne recounted, the equivalent of “Lake Erie [being] set down on Massachusetts” (2).
The Lindberghs were asked to carry supplies to villages and relief centers. As food would be too heavy to carry, they instead transported medical supplies and a doctor, who, according to Anne,“was almost more needed” than food due to “the epidemics that inevitably follow a flood.”
Their first flight was to a small village, Hinghwa, marooned on the center of a large flooded area, some 25 miles from the nearest dry ground. Anne describes flying over hundreds of small villages with water covering all but the roofs. “Those inhabitants still remaining,” she details, “were living in small boats” and surviving by “fishing in the streets and where the fields have been.” However, “the vast majority would never be helped. They simply could not be reached.”
When the Lindberghs landed in Hinghwa, they encountered the misery firsthand. The villagers had resorted to living in small fishing boats, and a growing number were facing illness, starvation, and lack of access to safe drinking water. Immediately upon landing, “men [began] leaping from boat to boat, toppling over each other in their efforts to get nearer to the plane,” in hopes that the Lindberghs had brought food.
But the Lindberghs had brought only medical supplies and a doctor, who hoped to develop a relief center for the stranded village. When, however, the villagers discovered that the “brown sack” the doctor carried contained no food, they became increasingly agitated, believing the Lindberghs were unable to understand them. Mutters of “the foreigners do not understand” and “we are starving,” echoed throughout the crowd, as a number of people began to mime eating with chopsticks.
When it became clear that the Lindberghs could not provide the resources that the villagers needed, the crowd became increasingly violent and desperate. The doctor, who had left the plane to talk with the villagers about his plans to open the relief center, later told Anne he had only “hoped he could get back to the plane alive.” When the Lindberghs expressed their intentions to leave the escalating and threatening situation, Anne recounts in meticulous detail the “hands clinging to the wings and tail surfaces” in a vain attempt to delay their departure. It was only when the doctor, a native, screamed in Chinese, “We’re starting the engine! If you don’t get back you’ll all be killed!” that the villagers began to back up from the plane. One woman retorted bitterly, “What does it matter? We have nothing.”
Later in the manuscripts, Anne returns to this nameless woman, describing her as “that last ebb of misery and hopelessness,” a traumatizing figure in her morose acceptance of death. Of her entire voyage to China, what haunted her the most was that one woman, trapped “in the heart of misery.” After witnessing so many people close to death and having to abandon them to their fates, she herself was able to “escape almost easily and quickly as one escapes from a horrible nightmare, in a flash of waking.”
In Anne’s drafts, she reflects on the general lack of knowledge of the flood in the United States, of the number of people affected and the general devastation. Mostly, however, she seems trapped in that helpless moment of realization that there was nothing she could do, no relief she could bring to even one of those people. This recognition of ‘failure’ served as an inspiration for her account of the trip in North to the Orient. While she could do very little to relieve the pain and suffering she saw, towards the end of one of the drafts, she exclaims, “but now I have told you,” conveying the sense of relief she felt at being able to bear witness.
After all, when no help can be given, sometimes all one can do is share another’s story, so, at the very least, their loss can be remembered.
1. “NOAA’S TOP GLOBAL WEATHER, WATER AND CLIMATE EVENTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY.” NOAA News Online (Story 334b). N.p., Dec. 1999. Web. 20 April, 2014. http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/s334.htm
2. All quotes from Box 79: 1, North to the Orient: Manuscripts, Anne Morrow Lindbergh Writings, Smith College Archives
Photos: Box 79:8, North to the Orient: Passports, Anne Morrow Lindbergh Writings, Smith College Archives; Box 78:21, North to the Orient: The Flood, Anne Morrow Lindbergh Writings, Smith College Archives
Sable Liggera, ’17, is an Environmental Science and Policy and East Asian Studies Double Major. They are a second year Global STRIDE and a second-year Chinese student. Last summer, they spent 2 months in Hefei, China, completing a language intensive program. They are currently a member of the Global Impressions Editorial Board.
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