登太谷老城鼓楼，逛昔日“中国华尔街”｜Taigu Old City, Shanxi Province｜Wall Street of China 200 Years Ago E02

Now I am on top of the Drum Tower. This is the view I have. Beautiful West Street. And you know what? In 1920s, this was called Wall Street of China. On both sides, you see some old architectures. 100 years ago, they served as a shops, grocery, silk, tea, leather, wholesale. Most of these trading companies, they were doing wholesale business. You probably have heard about Pingyao, another famous city in China, in Shanxi for financial hub or financial center of China. But actually, Taigu is much bigger than Pingyao in history and much wealthier than Pingyao. Shanxi merchants became prominent during the Ming and Qing dynasties and their dominant influence in Chinese commerce within the country and with neighboring countries like Mongolia, Russia, Japan, and they lasted for more than 500 years old. To deal with the transfer of a large amount of cash from one branch to another, the company introduced drafts, cashable in the company's many branches around China. They operated an early Chinese type of draft bank known as Piao Hao. Those were the dominant form of China banks until the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911. They're gonna replace all the bricks with these new ones, sad, and those tiles on the roof. Maybe we can have a look inside. Oh my god, this is sad. You see the new wooden parts and the new bricks. This is what I'm talking about. It is always cheaper to dismantle the old to build the new than renovating the old. Most of these shops have a beautiful name. All beautiful names. I think the Chinese enterprises should learn from them how to name their business. You see how beautiful the name is. Even if you don't understand what it means, it sounds beautiful. Both side rooms are even two-storied buildings. It means this was a wealthy place. Big business. Now we reached the city center where the drum tower is. Beautiful. This was built in late Ming dynasty and rebuilt in Qing dynasty. I heard when it was rebuilding, 600 business owners donated money to rebuild to renovate this drum tower. Another nice building facade. And I believe this is a draft bank. Nice. Today's antique shop. Drum tower on cars and bicycles could go under the drum tower. This design is genius. Drum tower. Close up for the drum tower. The west street. The wall street. Ah, that building. The entire roof is gone. This particular alley is called the Drunken Pleasure Garden. In Chinese Ming dynasty, deep in the alley, there was a Chinese restaurant called Zui Le Yuan. Garden of Drunken Pleasure. Fu Shou Xiang. Alley of Blessing and Longevity. Very nice name. This building is really tall. The tallest. It has four stories. This was a draft bank. And this four-story building used to be a vault where the bank kept all the sewer ingots. You can see this building is highly secured. Even the window wrapped with iron bars including the door. This brick wall is very historic to me. Although it's broken, but you can see the technique. They're very strict with the lime or whatever in between.