Nanguan Shizi, one of the most prosperous Big Shi characters in the old town of Lanzhou in the past.
Today, in the north and west of the Nanguan Shizi, there is a city gate, which was called Chongwen Gate (Chongwu Gate) during the Ming Dynasty, and in the Qing Dynasty, it was renamed Gaolan Gate. A few hundred meters north of gaolan gate, is the Suwang Mansion built in the Ming Dynasty. The Qing Dynasty became the Governor's Mansion, and after the Xinhai Revolution, it was the highest administrative body in Gansu.
In the Ming Dynasty, in the Su King's Mansion in Lanzhou, Gansu Province, there were nominally eleven Su Kings, but in fact only nine existed. The first was Zhu Zhen , the King of Jing, the sixth was Zhu Jin , the King of Ding, the seventh was Zhu Jian , the eighth was Zhu Jian , the eighth was Zhu Jian , the king of Yi ( ) Zhu Jin ( ' Zhu Jin ' ( ' Gui ' ) , the seventh is Zhu Jianyan the King of Zhao , the eighth is Zhu Jiantuo the King of Huai , the ninth is Zhu Jin□ , the king of Yi ( ' Gui ' is 'fire' on the left), the tenth is Zhu Shenyao the King of Xian, and the eleventh is Zhu Zhifeng.
Among them, the first generation of Su Wang, Zhu Yi, was more outstanding, and he was the fourteenth son of Zhu Yuanzhang. The history books say that he can write and fight, and Zhu Yuanzhang is more important than him. According to legend, the Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yunjue once hid in the Su King's Mansion, which is also "a cause for the incident, and there is no solid evidence". However, according to this, it can be vaguely guessed that the Yongle Emperor Zhu Di and Zhu Yu did not trust each other.
In the sixth year of Yongle (1408), Zhu Yu did not know what was going on, killed three soldiers of the Su Palace, and then clashed with the Pingliang Guards. After zhu di learned of these things, he arrested Liu Cheng and others around Zhu Yu and took them to the capital for interrogation, which was obviously a shock to the mountain, in order to warn Zhu Yu, so that Zhu Yu had to be careful in his future work.
Painted by Yang Jiaqi
From the northernmost end of today's Jiuquan Road and the junction of Zhangye Road (formerly known as Yuanmen Street), from north to south to the junction of Wudu Road and Jiuquan Road, this section of the street was called Silk Street in the old days. From Dashizi (where present-day Wudu Road meets Jiuquan Road) to Gaolan Gate of NanguanShizi, this section of north-south streets used to be called South Avenue. Located within the old city pool, South Avenue is a neighborhood of financial, leather goods and cultural industries.
In the thirty-second year of the Qing Dynasty (1906), the earliest financial institution in Gansu, the "Gansu Guanyin Money Bureau", was opened in the east of South Street Road, and later the Gansu Guanyin Money Bureau was moved to Yuanmen Street, which became the Dadeyuan Leather Goods Estate. In the fifties, it became a sugar industry tobacco and liquor store. On the west side of South Avenue, facing the sugar industry tobacco and liquor store in the east, it was the Lanzhou branch of Xinhua Bookstore in the 1950s, which was changed to a foreign bookstore in 1978, and in 1999, the foreign bookstore moved to Qin'an Road, where the Sino-Hungarian Building was built.
In addition to the Gansu Official Silver And Money Bureau, there are more than a dozen silver buildings and silver trumpets on South Avenue, and the more powerful ones are Tianshengxiang, Yishengkui, Yonghetai, Providence and so on.
South Avenue is also home to a number of fur merchants, such as Zheng Ruicheng, Jing Shun Cheng, Yu Xingcheng, etc., these fur merchants mainly deal in the fur of unprocessed wild animals. Merchants such as Tianshengde, Jixiang Ma, and Xinxingyong are mainly made and processed for fur. The merchants who deal in finished leather goods mainly include merchants jointly run by officials and businesses such as Dadeyuan, Tianzengcheng, and Zhongshengkui.
Among them, the strength of Dadeyuan Leather Goods Estate is quite prominent, and the investment amounts to 10,000 silver dollars, because his backstage boss is Lu Yunting. A fox skin robe from Dadeyuan can sell for more than one hundred silver dollars, and a lynx leather robe can be sold for up to three hundred and fifty silver dollars. Such a high price can only be afforded by high-ranking officials and nobles, and the profits obtained by Dadeyuan are naturally difficult for ordinary leather goods merchants to reach.
In 1943, the then Lanzhou Municipal Government transformed and expanded a small alleyway northeast of Gaolanmen into a vegetable market and leased it to merchants to operate, which was later called "Big Vegetable Market" by people in the old city. At the west exit of the big vegetable market, a plaque with the words "First Vegetable Market" hung on it, which was inscribed by Sun Runan, the financial director at the time. In 1964, he installed heating in Dacai Market, and then rebuilt the paving of the vegetable market into a brick-concrete structure, and asked Pei Jianzhun to write a plaque of "Lanzhou Jiuquan Road Sideline Food Shopping Mall". In 2004, the old-fashioned houses around The Dacai Market were demolished and a more modern urban style Century Square was built.
In the 1950s and 1960s, in the north of the Big Vegetable Market, the Jiuquan Road Sporting Goods Store and the Cultural Supplies Store were successively opened, and next to the Stationery Store was an east-west alleyway called Jade Lane. To the east is Huangjiayuan, and to the west is Tongyuanmen Street (now the north end of Jiuquan Road). At the corner of the south end of the West Exit of Jade Lane, the Rieter Western Restaurant, which was relocated to Shanghai in 1956, was later transformed into Jingyang Lou Restaurant. To the north of Jingyang Lou Restaurant is the Central Square Post Office. To the northeast of the Central Square Post Office, in the 1990s was the Dunhuang Tower Hotel.
Yang Jiaqi collection
Scholar Deng Ming recorded that in the 1940s, there was a craftsman surnamed Zhang in Jade Lane, who was good at making car windshields, and was unique in the old city, with no other semicolon, so he never allowed the driver to negotiate prices with him. If you grind a windshield, the craftsman surnamed Zhang asks for thirty, the driver is too expensive, saying that it is cheaper, but the result is that he will immediately increase thirty to forty. The driver, who is familiar with the craftsman surnamed Zhang, never dares to bargain with him, he says how much money, can only give how much money.
Directly opposite the Central Square Post Office, across the streets of Jiuquan Road, there is a shallow alleyway, and in the 1980s and 1990s, the deepest part of the laneway was the Lanzhou Municipal Library. There is a laneway on the west side of the library, running north-south, called Daosheng Lane, the middle of the laneway, after 1949, there was a liberation theater. The Liberation Theater was first built in Orchid Garden and moved to Daosheng Lane in 1953. The predecessor of this theater was a leather shop, minghongtai pizhuang, and the owner was Li Chaojie. To the east of Hongtai Leather Estate, there was a Gansu branch of the Northwest Bank in 1925.
In 1996, all the old-style houses in the west corner of the north end of Jiuquan Road were demolished and the Xinsheng Building was built. While demolishing the old house, a worker cleaning in Daosheng Lane inadvertently picked up a pot of silver dollars from inside the sandwich wall. Some people raise their flashlights in the middle of the night, looking between the ruins, and they don't know if they will encounter good luck and pick up valuable antiques.
After the completion of the Xinsheng Building, there was a bookstore on the first floor, named Gansu Square Book City. This bookstore has a bit of taste, the books purchased are more suitable for the tastes of readers, and the design and decoration in the bookstore also appears atmospheric and elegant. In the past, I often patronized this bookstore, but I didn't buy books, and when I had time, I liked to walk in and look at the bookshelf and smell the unique book volume atmosphere in the bookstore.
I remember that there was a middle-aged male clerk in the square book city before, more than forty years old, medium-sized, thin face, wearing glasses, as if he were a silver man, clever, and very familiar with the bibliography. There are many old customers who love to read, and when they go to the bookstore, they like to exchange information with him about all kinds of new books and old books, that is, to ask some old books that are difficult to circulate in the market, and he can also say that he is ugly and ugly, so that fans dare not underestimate it.
A few hundred meters south of today's Nanguanshi characters, the Qing Dynasty built an outer city gate called Gonglan Gate, and the common people called Nanshaomen. Between Gonglan Gate and Gaolan Gate, there were two more famous street names, and these two place names were bounded by Jing'er Street. The street near Gaolan Gate extends from north to south to Jing'er Street, called Fulu Street. The street near Gonglan Gate extends from south to north to Jing'er Street, called Xiaoyou Street. The name of these two streets today is Jiuquan Road.
Near Nanshaomen, in 1940, a merchant called Dasheng Sauce Garden in Northeast Harbin settled here to produce soy sauce and sweet noodle sauce. Inside and outside the Nanshao Gate, there used to be shops that specialized in selling rice wine. In the old town of Lanzhou, yellow wine was once popular, and there were several shops that produced yellow wine. In Huangjiayuan there is Liang Yu's home to produce yellow wine pottery garden, in Moujiazhuang there is the production of yellow wine merchant Wan Helong, in Guanyuan Hou Street (north of present-day Minqin Street) there is the yellow wine producer Huadong Lou, located in the north of Tanshi Street Yonghua Lou also produces yellow wine, these rice wine producers, can produce more than 100,000 catties of yellow wine per year.
The street east of NanguanShizi is called Qingyang Road today. In the Qing Dynasty, from the Nanguan Shizi to the west entrance of today's Dongfanghong Square, people called it Dongguan Street, also known as Shangguan and DongguanZheng Street. After 1911, it was renamed Fushou Street. In 1942, it was named Yimin Road. This is because at that time, there was a big official in Gansu named Zhu Shaoliang, who was a person with the character Yimin. In order to curry favor with Zhu Shaoliang, the subordinate officials in charge of building the road initially named it "Yimin Road". However, Zhu Shaoliang thought it was inappropriate, for fear of causing ridicule from the intellectuals of Jincheng, but he did not want to embarrass the subordinate officials who curried favor with him, so he took the opportunity to change the "Yimin Road" to "Yimin Road".
In the northeast corner of NanguanShizi, there used to be a post office, the post office was adjacent to Antaitang Pharmacy in the east, and yimden dyeing shop and candy store in the west. To the east of Antaitang is the Gansu Provincial Publishing Bureau. Founded in the Qing Dynasty, Antaitang Pharmacy is a century-old store with a bit of legend. The pharmacy was originally named An Tai Chang Pharmacy and was located on Xinguan Street (present-day Qin'an Road). Later renamed An tai tang, the new pharmacy settled in Dongguan Street (now Qingyang Road). In 2000, the Northwest Book City Building was built in the northeast of Nanguan Shizi, and Antai Hall was moved from Nanguan to the west corner of the south end of Tongwei Road.
In the southeast corner of Nanguan Shizi, in the old days, there were Xindaxiang Silk Satin Village, Wang Rongkang Suit Shop, and Chinese Restaurant. In 1975, the Lanzhou Department Store was built in the southeast corner of Nanguan Shizi, with six floors of the main building and four floors of the wing, which was the largest commercial building in Lanzhou in the 1970s.
In the southwest corner of Nanguan Shizi, it used to be Xinxianglou Halal Restaurant, and after the 1950s, it was halal second department. After 2000, the Min'an Building was built in the southwest corner.
The street from the west of NanguanShizi to today's Zhongshan Road was formerly called Nanguan Street, Nanguanzheng Street, and now Qingyang Road.
At the westernmost end of Nanguan Street, south of the road, in the area of today's Victory Hotel, it used to be a shop selling melons and fruits, and the owner's surname was Yang. Immediately to the east of Yang's melon and fruit shop, there is the Houjia Vinegar Factory, the Fan Family Residence, the Linzhuo Guest House, and a two-story small wooden building, known as the 'Guangchuan Building'. Looking north from the building, the opposite street is full of grocery stores, pot and helmet shops, carriage and horse shops, and shops that process metal utensils. In the old days, there were many merchants in this area, and it was very lively. In 1975, the Victory Hotel was built in the location of the melon and fruit shop of the Yang family, from the melon and fruit shop to the tuberculosis hospital facing the street, and the old-fashioned houses such as the Guangchuan Building disappeared unconsciously.
After the 1990s, many new building areas have been built in this area. Sometimes passing by here, looking up, the rows of tall buildings make people lament how the times have changed, beyond everyone's expectations. Now in this area, it is difficult to find the old-style courtyard of the old town, as well as the green brick façade, the ancient two-story small wooden building.
How to say it, the times are progressing, and society is developing. It is also common for people to miss the old buildings, the way of life in the old days, and the relatively strong human relations. But nowadays, seeing such a bustling and lively neighborhood, there are also private vehicles like water passing through the tall buildings of the old neighborhood. The streets are bustling with people, people's temperament is brighter, the clothing is more appropriate, and the food is more abundant. The new style of shopping and ordering fast food on the Internet is very convenient, which is a natural and casual standard of living in the eyes of many young people, but not every country can achieve it, nor can ordinary people in every country enjoy it. Every time I think of this, I, a person who misses the old, also have to praise from the bottom of my heart that we have really entered the era of industrialization, which should be a more proud thing for the old Lanzhou people. After all, there are only more than twenty countries in the world that can achieve the level of industrialization as a whole, and our country is one of them.
Night view of Lanzhou
At the northwest end of the intersection of today's Yongchang Road and Qingyang Road, is the Lanzhou Supply and Marketing Cooperative. In the old days, this was the residence of the Lanzhou tea merchants, and the name was the tea mansion. The main affairs of the tea mansion is to deal with the official tea horse division, in addition to paying taxes, that is, to the tea horse division to get the voucher for operating brick tea, the jargon is called "tea introduction", a ticket of tea can operate brick tea 4,000 pounds.
After the 1950s, the tea house became a flower gauze company, and later a tea shop and an agricultural and sideline company. In the 1970s, it became a daily necessities store in Lanzhou, and after the 1990s, the old houses around the daily necessities store were demolished and a commercial office building was built, and the first and second floors on the ground floor became shopping malls that mainly sold various types of household appliances.
In Lanzhou in the Qing Dynasty, the merchants who operated tea were divided into two major gangs, "East Cabinet" and "West Cabinet", and the shops of these two gangs were mainly gathered in Nanguan Street and West Street (now the west end of Zhangye Road). "East Cabinet" refers to merchants in Gansu, Shanxi and Shaanxi, mainly engaged in the purchase and sale of bulk tea produced in Lanzhou. The "West Cabinet" is mainly a Hui merchant, engaged in the sale of tea from Lanzhou to the northwest of various ethnic minority settlements. According to the "Lanzhou City Chronicle", there were more than 40 tea merchants in Lanzhou in the early Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, operating millions of pounds of tea every year.
Located on Nanguan Street, the "Mahesheng" tea house was quite financially strong at that time, and had a wide influence in Lanzhou, Qinghai, Ningxia and Tibet. Mahesheng Tea House was moved from Shaanxi to Lanzhou in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and initially specialized in Hunan brick tea. There are chariots and horse shops specializing in tea transportation along the northwest route, and tea shops in downtown areas. Mahesheng Tea Estate raises its own camel caravan and specializes in tea transportation. According to the officially issued invoice to purchase original tea from Hunan, through Hubei Hankou, after arriving in Xi'an, the original tea is processed into tea bricks, a tea brick weighs five pounds, the tea surface is printed with the words "Great Qing Merchant Ma Hesheng Vice Tea", packaged and transported to Lanzhou by Ma Hesheng's own chema shop. After arriving in Lanzhou, according to the official rules of the time, after counting and counting, all the tea leaves were stored in the official tea warehouse located in Shanzishi Street (at the east end of present-day Zhangye Road), and paid taxes to the government before they could be extracted and sold to the market. The tea brick leaves of Mahesheng Tea House are large and thin, very resistant to bubbles, and the tea flavor is rich and mellow, which is very suitable for the tastes of people in the northwest region. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, Mahesheng Tea Estate gradually declined.
In the 1950s, in the northwest of Nanguan Shizi, there was a Shanghai cake dumpling shop with seven employees, all from Shanghai. This cake shop handmade hemp dumplings, yellow pine cakes, red bean cakes, lard cakes, sake dumplings taste good, customers are full of doors, and the daily sales cash can reach thousands of yuan, which is not a small number in that era.
Not far to the west of the Cake Dumpling Shop in Shanghai, there is a nest, and inside is a narrow and long path, both sides are large courtyards, and the houses are mostly old-fashioned buildings, with large windows and small doors.
I have a classmate who used to live in this courtyard. He was smart, lively, made friends, had excellent organizational skills, and had a high level of prestige in our grade. I remember the popular Little Tigers song at that time, my lively classmate, and several classmates in the class also formed a little tiger team, the hairstyle on the head was all imitating the members of the little tiger team, after school, riding a bicycle, gathering in his house to sing and dance.
At that time, there were very few people with recording cameras in his home, and he had a business in his family, good economic conditions, and purchased a recording camera. During the school holidays, many of his classmates who befriend him will gather at his house to watch various martial arts movies and gunfight movies, which can be described as eye-opening and very happy. Looking back now, I still feel a little interesting, and I can't help but grin at the oily mouth of the middle-aged man and smile slightly triumphantly in private.