Wen │ Yin Bo
Just after the Arrival of the Year of the Tiger, a museum-level exhibition, "Erdongqiang Jiangnan Fieldwork Series: Jiangnan in the Ledger - Qianzhuang Document exhibition", was brilliantly presented in the hall on the first floor of Pudong Library. As part of the famous photographer, traveler and historical iconographer Er Dongqiang Jiangnan Fieldwork Series, this exhibition combines images and physical materials to open up a financial journey like a journey through financial time and space.
01
A historical gift from the "first of a hundred industries"
Qianzhuang began to appear around the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, initially the business was mainly silver money exchange, and later gradually increased the business of deposits, loans and exchange, etc., and was a financial institution that operated monetary credit business in the old days. Before the 1930s, the role and influence of Qianzhuang industry was no less than that of the Chinese-funded banking industry, known as the "first of a hundred industries", and the Jiangnan area was also the center of the prosperous development of Qianzhuang industry.
Stepping into the exhibition hall, old plaques, old ledgers, old furniture, and a large number of precious money and house objects come into view. Through the various types of banknotes on display, we can see the close connection between the daily life of ordinary people and finance, the remittances and attached letters handled by overseas Chinese for their families, and the commercial import, sale, deposit and flow of silver money recorded in the old account books... Behind the old objects, it shows a strong humanistic history and customs.
On a map of the 1946 Shanghai Qianzhuang neighborhoods, which was placed on a wall-large wall, the dense distribution of qianzhuang presented a grand scene of "many qianzhuangs as many rice shops". Tycoon, Gengyu, Jinyuan, Juxingcheng, Qiantai, Anyu, Fukang, Yuansheng, Zhentai, Tailai, Fushunde, Yanyuan, Yongqing, Yuancheng, Yuanshun, Zhicheng, Yongsheng and other Qianzhuang objects were exhibited one by one, and these Qianzhuang historical materials, including Shanghai, strung together Shanghai and Jiangnan, and the close relationship with the financial industry throughout the country, outlining a splendid financial map.
02
Real records from photographers
I believe that many people have difficulty associating Er Dongqiang with the "Qianzhuang Exhibition". Er Dongqiang, who has been engaged in professional photography for more than 40 years, has worked as a journalist and editor, and is the earliest freelance photographer in China, with his footprints in various provinces of China and around the world, shooting a large number of visual documents for this changeable era. In the late 1980s, his Jiangnan fieldwork work was officially launched, and he studied and sorted out Jiangnan culture, and recorded the regional community connected by the water network in Jiangnan since ancient times, the cultural community with emotional ties, and the economic community where commerce and trade are connected.
In this exhibition, we were pleasantly surprised to see some of the collections from the Bank Museum. As the financial industry museum with the richest collection and the largest number of rare cultural relics in China, the Bank Museum naturally attracted Er Dongqiang to stop and jointly launch albums such as "Treasures of Bank Museum", "Gifts of Financial History", "Solidified Movement" and so on, so that readers can experience the vicissitudes of the financial industry and feel the rich historical and cultural accumulation behind time through the search for memory and the interpretation of images.
The "Qianzhuang Documenta Exhibition" will last until March, and interested friends can go to Pudong Library to see the style. If you miss it, you can also go to the Bank Museum to expo finance, through the collection of fine works, "personally experience" the century-old financial storm, and enjoy a condensed history of Chinese finance.
The official public number of "Shanghai Bank Museum".