This view from the Pearl River shows the foreign factories with flags of the Netherlands, Britain, Sweden, Spain and Denmark. Factories (also called warehouses or hongs) were business markets where foreigners were able to do business, not factories in the modern sense. They were long and narrow brick buildings with two or three stories, ranged side by side and facing the water. They lined the north bank of the river and received cargoes from foreign vessels at Whampoa.