WELL-PRESERVED Pingyao ancient town in Shanxi Province was China's premier banking center during two dynasties, a bastion of gold, silver and wealthy merchants. Residents are moving out to create a tourism center, so visit now, advises Yao Minji.

Two deep ruts of ancient wagon wheels are preserved on a cracked section of stone roadway and displayed at the south gate of Pingyao ancient town in northern China's Shanxi Province.

The ruts, made over hundreds of years, were made by heavily laden wagons and caravans drawn by horse, oxen and camels carrying gold and silver from mines in what is now the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to across the nation.

One of China's best-preserved ancient towns, Pingyao was a famous financial hub that reached its peak in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, but the original town dates back to the reign of King Xuan (827-782 BC) of the Western Zhou Dynasty (11th century-770 BC).

Today Pingyao, 90 kilometers from the provincial capital Taiyuan, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site filled with sprawling well-preserved courtyard houses built by wealthy tradesmen and bankers. Multiple daily flights are available from Shanghai to Taiyuan and it will take another hour to drive from the capital to Pingyao, either by taxi or long-distance bus.

The town contains more than 300 ancient sites with fantastic architecture and fascinating stories of the rise and fall of big families, individuals and a whole group known as jinshang, or merchants from Shanxi; the province's ancient name was Jin.

The town is protected by massive 12-meter-high fortifications of compacted earth covered by brick and stone, first built in the 14th century. At the top the walls are 3-6 meters wide; there are 72 watchtowers and 3,000 external battlements. It had a moat and drawbridge and withstood centuries with few collapses and little repair, though Japanese invaders smashed through one section.

Seen from above the fortifications with six gates, it has the shape of a turtle, symbol of longevity - the south gate the head, the north the tail and the four other gates are the legs.

The hot and arid region contains the counties of Pingyao, Taigu and Qianxian, 400-500 miles (640-800km) from the capital of Beijing. It rose to prominence in the Qing and Ming dynasties, when the traditional social hierarchy of scholars (at the top), peasants (who grew grain), craftsmen (who made useful articles) and merchants (at the bottom since they produced nothing) were loosening. Trade between China, Mongolia as well as Russia became frequent and significant.

Dr H. H. Kong, a native of Taigu County and China's finance minister in the late 1930s (he was also the brother-in-law of Soong Mei-ling), recounted in his memoir how he considered Taigu much more prosperous than New York when he first visited the US city in 1901. At that time, the county had more than 9,000 merchants, accounting for 85 percent of its entire population. It had 13 billionaire families.

In the old times, the wheels of wagons that carried important goods and people were shielded with bronze (to protect them) and it took many trips and enormous weight over centuries to leave tracks several inches deep in the hard stone-paved roads.

In the Qing Dynasty, the country had 51 banks, 43 of them in Shanxi and 22 in this small town of Pingyao alone.

Every day hundreds of wagons carried precious metals through the town gates. The money is long gone, but the roadway is marked, a reminder that merchants from this town and surrounding area once controlled at least half of the nation's circulating wealth.

Today's merchants of Wenzhou in Zhejiang Province have impressed the world with their hard work, instinctively following the money and not unusually flaunting their wealth and luxuries.

Jinshang were very different; they were not ostentatious. Shanxi merchants had a deep attachment to their hometown - however much money they made and wherever they made it, they always returned home to buy land and build huge houses, rather than making less tangible investments.

Their loyalty left the area rich in tourism sites, dozens of splendid Shanxi courtyard houses from the peak of the Qing Dynasty.

Despite their wealth, these merchants were known to be meticulous and cautious, leading simple, thrifty lives and much preferring solid gold or silver ingots to extravagant jewelry. Though they built enormous houses with courtyards, pavilions and corridors accommodating extended families, the decor and facilities were far from opulent.

Qiao Family Courtyard House

Qixian County



Shanxi is parched for lack of rain. In the early Qing Dynasty, the drought was so bad that many residents were forced to relocate, most of them going west to what is now the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, or even further to Mongolia.

The famous Qiao Family from Qixian County owned a courtyard residence typical of the area's merchants' homes and theirs is a typical story of prosperity and collapse.

Qiao Guifa, the first generation of the family, accumulated the initial capital by working in a few shops in the city of Baotou, Inner Mongolia, and later opened his own small trading firm. He took his money back home and built the Qiao Family Courtyard House in Qixian County, like many others in the area.

It is well preserved, with six large courtyards and 313 rooms occupying more than 8,000 square meters, all enclosed by 10-meter-high brick walls. Seen from above, the layout and enclosed courtyards look like the Chinese character for "double happiness."

This is not the largest courtyard residence in the area, but it is the most famous as the site where director Zhang Yimou filmed the acclaimed "Raise the Red Lantern" (1991). The film was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards and Zhang was nominated for Best Director at the Venice International Film Festival, among many other accolades.

Another evocative film about the period, "Empire of Silver," (2011) by Christina Yao is set in the area in 1899 and tells the story of the decline of a major banking family in which the son does not wish to follow in his father's footsteps.

In each courtyard stands a large vat filled with water as well as a large stone sycee (ancient ingot). In that frequently drought-stricken region, both the vats of water and ingots were symbols of wealth and expressed wishes for more wealth.

Every drop of rainwater was precious. Big households had many vats, helpful in putting out fires in wooden buildings and nearby dry land.

Today vats of water are common in every household in the area.

The structure of all the courtyard residences is similar.

In the center of the courtyard is one main two-story house containing the master bedroom and living area, with small rooms on the side functioning as kitchen, storehouse, study, guest rooms and so on.

Almost all the carved couplets on either side of doorways are the originals and most urge the Qiao descendents to study hard and work hard. Some contain prohibitions against flaunting wealth or wasting money in any way.

Wood-carvings on beams and pillars and delicate, colorful paintings feature symbolic and auspicious subjects, expressing the family's wishes for health and wealth.

For example, the wooden carvings on the main gate of the second courtyard depict folktales about the three fortune gods, Fu (happiness), Lu (power and money) and Shou (health and longevity) - a typical painting believed to bring luck.

Qiao Zhiyong (1818-1907), grandson of Qiao Guifa, inherited the accumulated wealth and business from his grandfather and father and used it to establish the family at its most prosperous, with more than 200 national branches of their banks, pawn shops, grain shops and other businesses. They became one of the wealthiest of all Shanxi merchants.

The family was particularly influential briefly after 1900, when the Empress Dowager Cixi (1861-1908) was forced to flee the Forbidden City in 1900 when foreign troops relieved the siege of foreign legations during the Boxer Rebellion (1898-1901).

The royal refugees passed through the small county and the Qiao family received them warmly, while some other families refused shelter and hospitality since they doubted the empress would ever return to the throne.

When she did return, she rewarded the Qiao family with official recognition (written appraisal which makes it easier for them to conduct business with or through government) and a pair of black wooden lanterns, each carved with nine dragons, the only two such in the world.

Two other notable treasures are kept in the house today: a large mirrored ball used to covertly monitor the facial expressions of business partners in a meeting and a one-meter-tall mirror with a carved wooden base depicting a rhinoceros standing on clouds. The mirrored ball is said to have been purchased in the United States.

The family's prosperity, however, did not last long after 1900, when the entire nation was engulfed in conflicts.

Qiao Yingxia, the sixth generation of the family who returned to China from overseas, inherited the business from his grandfather and tried very hard to fight the family's downfall around 1911, when the Qing Dynasty fell and was replaced by the Republican (1911-1949) government.

It was a period of upheaval when the government and various local warlords (China's warlord era covered 1916-1928) all took advantage of wealthy families.

Newly signed preferential foreign treaties forced Chinese merchants to relinquish their advantages and foreign businesses, especially foreign banks, started entering China. The Qiao family, like dozens of other Shanxi merchant families, couldn't resist the trend; the family split up and moved abroad.

Qixian County also contains a few other well-preserved courtyard houses of wealthy merchants, a suanpan (abacus) museum and a museum of security firms that guarded the traders and businesses of jinshang.

Ri Sheng Chang Bank

Pingyao ancient town



The Ri Sheng Chang Bank, meaning prosperous like a rising sun, is commonly considered the first piaohao, an early Chinese model of banking that conducted money exchanges with bank drafts. Archeologists and historians say such financial exchanges had taken place long before the bank existed.

Founded in 1823, it is now a museum of Chinese banks and the original architecture contains a large, well-preserved underground vault.

"It is said that if you stumble and fall in this place, it's a good sign because you are tripping over gold and silver," a museum guide said.

"You can never imagine how much money this basement once stored," she said, trying to convince visitor to buy a small sycee or ingot souvenir that comes with a ticket to the underground vault.

"It is not a second ticket. It comes with a souvenir that can bring you wealth. And the amount of money you pay totally depends on how big a sycee you want to take home. It's your call," the guide continued, displaying a bit of the famous salesmanship that brought wealth to the region.

The smallest costs 50 yuan (US$87.85) and many visitors buy it for luck, to satisfy curiosity and get a glimpse of the vault that once held so much silver.

The founding of Ri Sheng Chang Bank was typical. The owner started as a tradesman just like the Qiao family, and came to realize the inconvenience and risk of carrying so much silver around in dangerous places.

He first started money exchanges for his own business, opening branches where his business operated. He later abandoned trading to focus exclusively on banking when he realized the potential in the new industry.

Like the Qiao family, Ri Sheng Chang didn't escape financial ruin and went bankrupt in 1914, a major financial blow felt throughout China.

At one time, 22 such draft banks operated in Pingyao, with business and branches around China as well as in Russia and Japan. Some banks had representative offices in Europe.

Today, many bank buildings are well preserved and owners have turned them into popular hostels for backpackers, with lots of historic ambience.

The local government has been relocating all native residents to new towns just a few miles from the ancient town. The aim is to empty the entire ancient town in a few years, so that everyone will live in a new town and go to work in the tourism industry in the ancient town every day. Other banking towns in the area also see their future in tourism.