Foreigners have three skills: first, warships, second, firearms, and third, training methods.

1. Set up a factory in China to manufacture guns and ships;

2. Learn western training methods;

3. Translate western language books and cultivate talents who can master western language technology.

I. Explanation of words

Teacher: It means learning from the teacher.

Yi: refers to barbarians. At that time, the Qing Dynasty considered itself a powerful country in China and called the western countries barbarians.

Long skill: refers to their specialty, that is, the advanced industries, weapons and so on of western powers.

Control: control, processing, restriction, etc.

Therefore, the whole sentence probably means learning to manufacture and use foreigners' advanced technology (weapons) to combat and restrict foreigners.

The idea was not put into practice at that time. Later, the Westernization School put forward the idea of "learning from foreigners to control foreigners" and put it into practice, which is known as the Westernization Movement in history. The Qing government took a step forward in learning from the west.

This sentence comes from Wei Yuan's poor book Atlas of the Sea. On how to resist foreign aggression and effectively attack invaders, Wei Yuan put forward this famous saying: "Learn from foreigners and learn from them to control them".

This is the representative slogan of learning utensils from the west in the late Qing Dynasty.

Two. Brief introduction of the author

Wei Yuan (1794.4.23-1857.3.26) was an enlightenment thinker, politician and writer in Qing dynasty. The name is far-reaching, the word is silent and deep, and the word Mohsen, Han Shi, and the number is good. Han nationality, a native of Jintan, Longhui, Shaoyang, Hunan. He was a scholar in the second year of Daoguang (1822) and in the twenty-fifth year of Daoguang (1845). Guan Gaoyou knew the state, abandoned the official and retired in his later years, devoted himself to Buddhism and passed on his dharma name. The outstanding representatives of the first batch of intellectuals who "opened their eyes to see the world" in modern China.

Wei Yuan believed that the purpose of learning should be "to apply what he has learned", and put forward the idea of "turning decay into magic and facilitating people", and advocated learning advanced western science and technology. And put forward the idea of "learning from foreigners to control foreigners", which opened a new trend of understanding the world and learning from the West, and was an important symbol of China's thought from tradition to modern times.