"Chief Zhang, how did it feel?" Wang Hailong sat beside the old man and asked as he watched Chief Zhang stare in astonishment, unable to recover his senses for a long while.
"Breathtaking. Truly breathtaking. I never imagined the gap between us and the West had already reached such a point!" Chief Zhang said helplessly.
Through the train window, Chief Zhang saw not only East Africa's prosperity, wealth, and formidable strength, but also the Far East Empire's backwardness, poverty, weakness, and helplessness.
Resting a hand on the window frame, he asked Wang Hailong, "Young man, do you think we still have a chance to surpass the Western nations? Seeing the construction of Dar es Salaam city, I even feel a sense of powerlessness rising in my heart."
Faced with Chief Zhang's worries, Wang Hailong consoled him. "Chief, there is no need to worry too much. Although the Western world is developing at a furious pace now, as long as the insightful people of our country can unite, one day we will achieve the rejuvenation of our nation and state."
"Take East Africa, for instance. Its situation in the last century was not much better than ours. Before the Rhine imperial family arrived, there was not a single modern state on the entire African continent."
"At that time, even Egypt, Africa's strongest ancient civilization, was merely a semi-colonial country tossed back and forth by Britain and France. The vast Sub-Saharan regions were even more a desert of civilization. If East Africa had not risen like a strange army charging from the flank, what we would see now would not be a Dar es Salaam so rich and powerful, but a desolate beach with scarcely a trace of human habitation."
"And East Africa took only half a century to grow from a