What caught my eye about that story was the transpacific communications, since the dateline was Nov. 10, 1911. Looking it up on Wikipedia, the first transpacific cables were laid in 1902 (transatlantic in 1986), so getting a cable from Nanking was still a recent development. I know 1911 wasn't the stone age, but I have a healthy respect for what they were able to accomplish with the technology they had at the time.