“The older people of the town were sad and upset,” said Yao Minlin, 48, a native of Pingyao who led a couple of foreign visitors through the alleyways one recent afternoon. “They didn’t want to see the banks close because then they would no longer have income. Everyone here depended on the banks — merchants, guards, restaurateurs.”
Prodded by preservationists like Ruan, local officials began restoring parts of Pingyao in the 1980s, giving the town a second life as a tourist attraction.
The first bank in China, called Rishengchang, or Sunrise Over Prosperity, is now a museum in the town center, as are four others.
So great is the mystique around the banks that Chinese leaders have made pilgrimages here from Beijing. Framed photographs in Rishengchang show visits by Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), his predecessor Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and former prime minister Zhu Rongji (朱鎔基). Their visits were more relaxed than that of Emperor Guangxu (光緒), who slept in one of Pingyao’s banks while fleeing invading European and Japanese troops in 1900.
To the people of Pingyao, today’s leaders can learn from the old ways of doing business.
“Until the end of the Qing Dynasty, Pingyao’s banks had confidence, trust and good manners,” said Li Yuerong, an aide to the manager of the museum in Rishengchang, which receives about 2,000 visitors a day. “This has a lot of benefits for management and financial development.”
Li pointed out that the first manager of Rishengchang, Lei Lutai, was 53 when he started working at the bank. These days, she said, powerful businesspeople lack the wisdom of age.
“They want to become rich very fast,” she said. “They can’t go step by step. They’re in a hurry.”
It is a myth, of course, that business dealings of that era were free of deceit and theft.
The cold, dark rooms of the old banks show the paranoia that grew as piles of silver accumulated. The treasuries of the banks were vertical pits dug beneath raised platform beds. Sleeping mats covered the pits. Two or three bank employees would sit or sleep atop the mats around the clock, said Yao, who has a relative who once worked as a clerk at Rishengchang.
Fear gave birth to Chinese versions of Wells Fargo — companies that protected the silver as it was transported from one city to another. The guards were trained in martial arts and armed with halberds, maces and battle-axes. Today, on weekends, a master still teaches kung fu to children on the grounds of one of the old martial arts schools.
The memories of former glory linger in other buildings. At a temple one afternoon, crowds of local residents clutching incense sticks bowed in front of an altar to the god of wealth. The families of Pingyao know all too well this old saying, “Wealth does not last for more than three generations.”
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