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Former site of the Tianjin Branch of Shokin Bank in Yokohama, Japan
Rarely write about western-style buildings in the old Tianjin Concession. Although Tianjin's Nine Nations Concession is known as the "International Architecture Expo", these modest or beautiful or beautiful and delicate buildings are indeed enough to absorb sperm, but most of them are not open to the public, just look at the appearance. On February 7th, the Tianjin Branch of the Bank of China Museum was officially opened to the public, and the site was selected in the former Building of the Tianjin Branch of the Shokin Bank of Yokohama, Japan. Let ordinary citizens have the opportunity to walk into an old building again.
Jiefang North Road was originally the main road in the British Concession - Victoria Road. This is a magical street, the place where China's financial industry set sail, and China's Wall Street in the early years of the Republic of China. To this day, there are still many banks on this road, and they still occupy the foreign bank buildings of a hundred years ago. At No. 80 Jiefang North Road, the Tianjin Branch of the Yokohama Shokin Bank of Japan opened in 1899, which is now the tianjin branch of the Bank of China.
Founded in 1880, Yokohama Shokin Bank was an early foreign exchange bank in Japan and an important financial institution for the future economic aggression of Japanese imperialism against China. Through aggressive privileges, he actively participated in the export of capital to China, undertook a number of loans to the Qing government and the Beiyang government, as well as local government and industrial loans, and squeezed a large amount of profits from them. During the war of aggression against China, it cooperated with the Japanese army to control the financial market in the occupied areas, and developed resources and purchased materials to achieve the purpose of "feeding the war with war." In 1945, yokohama Shokin Bank's assets in China were confiscated. The head office of Yokohama was reorganized and renamed the Bank of Tokyo.
In 1900, the "Gengzi Incident" broke out, the Qing army shelled Tianjin for lease, and several buildings including the Tianjin branch of the Yokohama Shokin Bank were destroyed. In 1925, Edison and Daillas, engineers in the Engineering Division of the British Merchants and Merchants, jointly designed a new building for the Tianjin branch. Adopt a neoclassical style with an emphasis on symmetry. The building is a three-storey mixed structure with four floors in part. Granite walls, golden gates, 8 Corinthian columns form an open colonnade with a frontal eaves, and a glass roof and cloister are built inside. The entire building covers an area of 2830 square meters, with a construction area of 3150 square meters, and was completed on October 25, 1926, showing a stable and gorgeous architectural style.
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945, the building was used by the Tianjin branch of the Bank of China, which remains to this day. Recently, on the occasion of the 110th anniversary of the establishment of Bank of China, the Tianjin Branch of the Bank of China Museum was officially opened. On February 12, I visited the new museum. At present, the building has opened parts of the first and second floors as exhibition areas, which are divided into seven themes, which not only show the historical development of the Bank of China, but also introduce the history of modern Tianjin, especially Tianjin as a financial center.
To be fair, the museum's layout and design are very general, but it is still worth praising to be able to dig deep into Tianjin's rich historical style buildings and cultural characteristics of the block resources, and open this third batch of municipal cultural relics protection units for citizens to visit!