ABSTRACT
Within Shanghai was an old bookstore known as the Siwentang. The owner, Wei Qigang, was an old man, nearly eighty, who rarely showed his face in the shop. The proprietor of the Jinshunji, Lian Weicai, transferred the Shanghai branch to the Englishman Harry Wade. Wade had come from the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca and had been able to gain a mastery of the Chinese language. Lian had served as financier for the Siwentang, and Wei Qigang had placed the shop under Lian's care. In addition to his study of the Chinese classics texts, Lian concurred with Wei's not so geriatric ideas of introducing foreign political, economic, scientific, and technological materials to China. Great Britain had sent Shanghai Consul Thomas Taylor Meadows as close as possible to Nanjing to try to get information about the Taiping movement. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was a regime that would perhaps unite and take control over China.
