City Rising — David Rotenberg

The first book in the Shanghai Tetralogy - City Rising - starts on the Hua Shan (the Holy Mountain) 250 years before Christ where the First Emperor, the most powerful man the world to that time had ever known, bequeaths a talisman to his three trusted followers: the BodyGuard, his favorite Courtesan, and his Head Confucian - a narwhal tusk with carvings depicting the growth for the next 2500 years of a city at the Bend in the River, Shanghai. The warning from the First Emperor before he commits suicide is to watch for the White Ships on Water - and so the progeny of the three who are entrusted with the Tusk do, and then in 1841, they arrive. British Men of War ships - and Opium.City Rising tells the story of two destitute Baghdadi boys who become opium lords - and the battles against the powerful British Opium companies - and the boys' eventual love of the City at the Bend in the River - Shanghai.