Herbert Hoover

Wait, Herbert Hoover? As in, the "31st President of the United States" Herbert Hoover?

*However, if you look closely, you can still spot his shadow: he is the mustached man smoking a pipe, who passes Sauer on the platform of the Settlement Train Station.

Yes, that Herbert Hoover. (He wasn't always the President of the United States, you know.) A mining engineer working in China, he very soon achieved international fame as the man who masterminded the defense of the Foreign Concessions outside of Tientsin; years later, he would gain more renown as the man who fed war-torn Europe in the aftermath of World War I. He is also noted for the fact that in the White House, when he and his wife did not wish to be overheard, they spoke Mandarin Chinese to each other.

26 years old at the time of the story, he and his wife were in Tientsin when the Boxer Rebellion began. He directed the building of barricades, and more than once risked his life protecting not only the foreigners, but also the friendly Chinese trapped inside the Concessions with them.

If you are wondering why he gets a page here when you did not read about him anywhere in the novel, is because my beta readers demanded the oversize first draft of the manuscript be cut severely, and very sadly, his scene had to go.*