Liang Qichao is born on February 23, 1873 in a village of farmers and fishermen in Xinhui, a southern Chinese county in Guangdong province. Liang came from a relatively wealthy family of local gentry. Given a traditional Confucian schooling, Liang quickly emerged as a prodigy, passing the local examinations at 11 and the provincial examinations at 16. Like Wei Yuan and Feng Guifen before him, however, Liang found the national exams in Beijing a sterner test.

Xinhui County, Guangdong, China