A New Era for the Land

In the autumn of 1839, the smoke of the Opium War drifted across the mouth of the Pearl River and into Guangzhou's Thirteen Factories. Lu Qianfan, a young man from a merchant family in Xiangshan, got his first measure of old China in the face of foreign guns and cannons. For the first time, he also understood that for a nation to renew itself, courage and cries of injustice were nowhere near enough. Someone had to build steamships, lay railways, establish banks, and open schools.