The Huai river flood to the north was equal or greater in magnitude. One one thinks of a conventional flood, it comes and it goes. Not so this flood, it came and receded very slowly waters languished on the land for 3-6 months. The floods impact grew month by month as winter approached and there was little food or shelter. In total, it affected over 50,000,000 people leaving a year long trail of death, starvation and disease. The 1931 flood killed 15 times the number of people lost in the Indonesian tsunamis of December 2004, and yet scarcely a word has been written of it. History focused instead on other disasters that year. China’s attention was on a civil war between the Communists and Nationalists; the Japanese were invading in the North, while the world was deep into the Great Depression.