"When China wakes up, the world will shake" Napoleon prophesied. Two hundred years later the world is coming to terms with China's growing economic and military dominance, and is only just starting to recognize its diplomatic and cultural influence.

In the front rank of those who wakened the Sleeping Giant was Walter Medhurst. By the time he left China in 1856 he had spent twenty-six years among the Chinese Diaspora of South East Asia and, following the Treaty of Nanking, another fourteen years among the mainland Chinese.

In so doing he became the Grand Old Man of the early foreign community in Shanghai, not just because of his achievements in publishing but by his influence on that whole generation of British and American Protestant missionaries who introduced modern education, medicine and social reform to China.

When he died in 1857, Walter Medhurst left behind a great legacy that included the Parapattan Orphanage, All Saints' Jakarta, Renji Hospital, the Shanghai Mission Press and a Chinese Bible that was used for more than 70 years. But Walter's greatest achievement was surely the opening up of China to the West, a lasting legacy that affects our world even today.