Several months had passed since the great political upheaval in the capital. The winter ice had given way to a muddy, industrious spring, and nowhere was the energy of the new era more palpable than on the coast near Tianjin. The flat, marshy plot of land, once useful only to clam diggers and salt farmers, was being violently transformed. It was a chaotic, beautiful symphony of construction, a landscape of raw earth, wooden scaffolding, and the skeletal iron frames of new buildings rising against the sky.
Viceroy Li Hongzhang stood on a high wooden platform, his dark silk robes a stark contrast to the mud and industry below. The sea wind, fresh and damp, tugged at his long beard, but his gaze was fixed, his expression one of deep, profound satisfaction. He was a man watching his lifelong dream rise from the earth. The funds, once a trickle he had to beg for, were now a mighty river, flowing directly from the new Audit Office in Beijing.
At the heart of the construction site was the new Tianjin Arsenal and Ironworks. Its centerpiece, a massive, brick-encased furnace, was being prepared for a momentous occasion: the first successful pour of Bessemer steel ever produced on Chinese soil. The air was thick with the heat, the acrid smell of burning coal, and the triumphant, rhythmic roar of the great steam-powered bellows.
Beside Li Hongzhang stood Li Fengbao, the quiet naval expert who was now the chief architect of this entire enterprise. His scholar's robes were smudged with grease and soot, and he looked more at home here, amidst the machines and blueprints, than he ever had in the stifling courts of Beijing.
"It is a glorious sound, is it not, Deputy Commissioner?" Li Hongzhang rumbled, his voice filled with a rare, undisguised joy. "For twenty years, I petitioned the Dragon Throne for a single, modern cannon from the Krupp works in Germany. I wrote memorials, I pleaded, I begged. I was met with endless lectures on the impropriety of using barbarian tools and the superiority of our own traditions." He gestured with a sweep of his arm at the roaring furnace. "And now, they have given me a factory to build a thousand cannons of my own. It seems the Emperor's 'divine insight' extends to the practical arts."
From a safe distance, a small group of German engineers, led by the stout, bearded Herr Schmidt, observed the proceedings with a mixture of professional pride and nervous anxiety. Their work was about to be put to the test.
But they were not the only new faces here. Working alongside the Chinese laborers was a small, distinct group of young Chinese men. They were the first fruits of another of Ying Zheng's secret initiatives. These were the first engineering students, dispatched by Shen Ke's program months ago, who had returned from their initial, intensive training in the factories of Germany and the shipyards of Great Britain. They were no longer just scholars who could read about machines; they were now apprentices who understood them.
Their hands were still soft compared to the calloused hands of the laborers, but they moved with a new confidence, conferring with the German engineers, translating complex technical instructions, their minds bridging the vast gap between ancient Chinese scholarship and modern industrial science.
Herr Schmidt approached the platform, his face red from the heat of the furnace. "Your Excellency," he said through his translator, his voice filled with excitement. "The temperature is optimal. The impurities have been burned away. We are ready for the pour."
Li Hongzhang nodded grimly. "Proceed."
The German engineer shouted a series of sharp, guttural commands. The massive furnace was tilted on its axis by a series of gears driven by a chugging steam engine. With a blinding flash of white-hot light, a river of molten steel, incandescent and beautiful, poured from the mouth of the furnace into a series of large, sand-lined molds. The heat was so intense it could be felt hundreds of feet away, a wave of raw, elemental power.
The pour was a success. The first ingots of modern, high-quality steel were cooling on the foundry floor.
Later, after the ingots had cooled enough to be handled, Li Hongzhang and Li Fengbao inspected the results. The steel was clean, strong, and free of the imperfections that had plagued traditional Chinese metallurgy for centuries.
Herr Schmidt joined them, wiping his brow with a soot-stained handkerchief. "It is good steel, Your Excellency," he said with professional pride. "But the work has only just begun. The machines are here. The knowledge is here." He gestured towards the young Chinese students who were now eagerly examining the steel ingots. "Their theoretical knowledge is excellent. The universities in my homeland have taught them well. But their hands are still the hands of scholars. They must learn the feel of the steel. They must learn the rhythm of the machines. There is a great difference between knowing the path and walking the path."
Li Hongzhang placed a heavy hand on the shoulder of one of the young students, a brilliant young man named Xu, who had just returned from Berlin. "They will learn," the Viceroy said, his voice firm. "A scholar's hand that can master the complexities of a brush can learn to master the precision of a micrometer. We are not a nation of fools."
Li Fengbao then unrolled a new set of blueprints on a nearby crate. They were not for the German ironclads. They were schematics he and the new students had been working on, adapting European designs for their own purposes. They were for a new, breach-loading, rifled artillery piece.
"Now that we can produce our own steel," Li Fengbao said, his voice filled with a quiet excitement, "we no longer need to rely solely on importing finished weapons from the West. We can begin to build our own. We can adapt their designs, improve upon them, and create weapons suited for our own needs."
This was the true significance of the day's achievement. It was not just about making steel. It was about achieving military self-sufficiency. It was the first step in breaking free from the technological dominance of the Western powers.
As the sun began to set, casting long shadows from the rising steel frames of the new buildings, a small, symbolic ceremony was held. The first cooled ingot of steel was brought forward. Li Hongzhang, using a heavy hammer, struck a chisel against it, formally marking it as the first product of the Tianjin Arsenal. The sharp, clear ring of steel on steel echoed across the muddy flats, a sound that was both a triumphant fanfare and a declaration of intent. It was the first note in the symphony of a new, industrial China, a future being forged in fire and steel, all according to the silent, two-thousand-year-old will of the boy who sat on the Dragon Throne.