Building Guns and Cannons in Ming China

In the autumn of the forty-sixth year of the Wanli reign, the Battle of Sarhu was about to begin.

At a garrison in Beizhili, craftsman Chen Daniu offended his superior and was ordered to repair a discarded Song dynasty triple-bow siege crossbow within a month. If he failed, his entire family would be exiled.

No one thought he could do it.

Then the giant crossbow thundered to life, shattering a target eight hundred paces away.

A soul from more than four hundred years in the future, carrying a complete body of modern technical knowledge, began to change the fate of an empire from that moment on.

Improved iron furnaces, standardized production, corned gunpowder, lightweight field cannons… He brought Ming firearms a century ahead of their time.

But technology could not change people’s hearts, nor could it save a dynasty on the verge of collapse.

As rebels rose everywhere, fires raged across Liaodong, and the capital stood on the brink of falling

he chose to take the flame south.

Not to preserve the realm of one family or one surname, but to safeguard the crafts that must not be lost, and to give a nation the strength to rise again.

"I Make Guns and Cannons in the Ming Dynasty": How one craftsman kept the flame of technological civilization alive through an age of chaos.