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In the first year of the Yongzheng

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emperor — 1723 — an order came out of

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the palace. A medicine shop outside the

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front gate was to send medicine to

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the court on schedule: once every three

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00:00:23,438 --> 00:00:26,953
months, without delay.That order stayed in

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00:00:26,968 --> 00:00:29,806
force until the Qing dynasty ended.

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One hundred and eighty-eight years.

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Eight emperors.A private shop on a

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commercial street. Why would the palace wait

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for it?

12
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At the end of the last film

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we said the next stop was Yangzhou.

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We are still in Beijing.

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We did not change our minds.

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This city's archive does not fit into

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one film.Names, the axis, the canal

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that was one thread: who built this

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city.There is another thread: who traded

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here, and what made them last.

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That thread has to be finished before

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we can leave. Yangzhou — we are coming.

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Start with the name of the street.

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In the Ming dynasty, under the Hongzhi

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emperor, every lane junction in the capital

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was fitted with a timber fence,

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opened at dawn and shut at night,

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to keep thieves out.

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Outside the front gate ran a lane

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called Langfang Fourth Lane. The shopkeepers pooled money and

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built a fence taller than anyone else's.

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In time people stopped calling it Langfang Fourth Lane.

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They called it Dashilan — the Great Fence.

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The map of the capital made in

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the Qianlong reign prints exactly those three

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characters.Walk further in, and you pass

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a run of shop names.

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Take them one at a time

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each is a sentence an owner wrote

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about himself and left hanging over the

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door.Neiliansheng, founded in 1853 by Zhao Ting,

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00:02:02,662 --> 00:02:06,059
from Wuqing in Tianjin, making court boots.

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Nei means the inner palace.

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Liansheng is a wish for the customer:

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that he rise three ranks in office.

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A shoe shop wrote its customers' careers

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into its own name.

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Ruifuxiang takes its name from a story

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in the Records of Searching for Spirits:

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00:02:25,368 --> 00:02:27,250
the blood of the qingfu insect,

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00:02:27,471 --> 00:02:30,500
mother and child, smeared on coins

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money that flies home after you spend

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00:02:33,132 --> 00:02:35,427
it. The insect is the source of

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wealth; rui and xiang are auspicious.

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It opened in Jinan in 1862 and did

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not reach Dashilan until 1893.

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Quanjude, 1864. Yang Quanren, from Jizhou,

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00:02:52,368 --> 00:02:54,074
took over a fruit shop that had

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00:02:54,088 --> 00:02:56,956
closed. The fruit shop had been called

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00:02:56,971 --> 00:03:00,780
Dejuxuan. He turned the three characters around:

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Quanjude. His own name held the character

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quan; jude means to gather virtue together.

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He did not invent a name.

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He took one that had already failed

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in that very spot, and turned it

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around.Liubiju has two accounts.

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One says: of the seven things a

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00:03:20,868 --> 00:03:22,956
household must open its door for

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00:03:23,412 --> 00:03:27,456
firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce,

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vinegar, tea — the shop sold everything except

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00:03:30,471 --> 00:03:33,074
tea. The other says the two characters

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refer to six rules in the old

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brewing method: the grain must be uniform,

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the yeast sound, the steeping clean,

75
00:03:40,294 --> 00:03:42,544
the vessels good, the heat right,

76
00:03:42,574 --> 00:03:45,632
the water fragrant. Both describe a shop

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telling you how it works — one by

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00:03:47,647 --> 00:03:49,250
what it sells, one by how it

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makes.And Duyichu: by tradition, the one

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shop in the capital that had not

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00:03:55,280 --> 00:03:58,721
closed on New Year's Eve in 1752.

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The name it received was given by

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00:04:01,500 --> 00:04:04,985
an emperor. Duyichu means "the only one"

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00:04:05,897 --> 00:04:08,177
a claim so large that only someone

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00:04:08,191 --> 00:04:09,412
else could confer it.

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00:04:10,567 --> 00:04:13,023
Back to that order from the palace.

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The shop it was looking for had

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00:04:15,376 --> 00:04:17,346
been founded by a man named Yue

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00:04:17,361 --> 00:04:20,582
Xianyang.He was from Cixi in Zhejiang,

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00:04:21,214 --> 00:04:24,626
born in 1630. In the early Qing he

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00:04:24,640 --> 00:04:27,140
served in the imperial medical office as

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00:04:27,155 --> 00:04:30,773
a minor clerk — eighth rank, handling documents

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00:04:30,788 --> 00:04:33,655
in and out. Not a famous physician:

94
00:04:34,185 --> 00:04:37,140
a clerk. For years his work was

95
00:04:37,155 --> 00:04:40,170
moving paper — petitions in, orders out.

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He spent his twenties watching how the

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00:04:42,935 --> 00:04:44,626
palace wrote things down.

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In 1669 he left the bureaucracy, opened a

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dispensary outside the front gate on West Damochang Street,

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00:04:53,493 --> 00:04:56,832
and named it himself: Tongrentang — the two

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00:04:56,846 --> 00:05:00,435
characters tongren meaning "universal and refined".

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He was thirty-nine, with no reputation to

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trade on.Thirty-three years later his third

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00:05:06,582 --> 00:05:09,508
son, Yue Fengming, did two things.

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In 1702 he moved the dispensary to Dashilan

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00:05:13,832 --> 00:05:15,052
and made it a shop.

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Four years after that he gathered his

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00:05:17,699 --> 00:05:20,949
father's formulas into a book — the family's

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00:05:20,964 --> 00:05:25,126
recipes for pills, powders, ointments and pellets

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and published the Tongrentang Medicine Catalogue.

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00:05:28,788 --> 00:05:31,729
An old firm publishing its own recipes

112
00:05:31,758 --> 00:05:35,023
is already unusual. What he did next

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00:05:35,052 --> 00:05:37,243
is the reason this film exists.

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00:05:37,714 --> 00:05:39,920
In the preface to that catalogue he

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00:05:39,935 --> 00:05:43,096
wrote twenty characters. They were not written

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00:05:43,111 --> 00:05:46,082
for other pharmacists. They were written for

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00:05:46,096 --> 00:05:49,729
customers:"Though the preparation is tedious,

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I dare not spare the labour.

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00:05:52,670 --> 00:05:55,685
Though the ingredients are costly, I dare

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00:05:55,699 --> 00:05:57,376
not cut the materials."

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Two clauses, each saying I dare not.

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Twelve words in the English, twenty in

123
00:06:03,317 --> 00:06:05,714
the Chinese — and not one of them

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00:06:05,729 --> 00:06:07,964
is a boast. A shop that had

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00:06:07,979 --> 00:06:10,038
already been trading for more than thirty

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00:06:10,052 --> 00:06:12,096
years took its own standard and wrote

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00:06:12,111 --> 00:06:14,552
it down, in public, on paper,

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where any customer could hold it against

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00:06:17,023 --> 00:06:17,332
him.

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But a sentence written on paper only

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spends like money if someone will stand

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behind it.Seventeen years after Yue Fengming

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wrote those twenty characters, someone came forward

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to stand behind them.

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Not a rival. The palace.

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00:06:35,518 --> 00:06:38,768
In 1723 the palace set up an imperial

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dispensary and needed a private shop to

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supply ingredients and prepare medicines for the

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inner court. The shop chosen was Tongrentang.

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The weight of that is not in

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the word imperial. It is in the

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00:06:52,621 --> 00:06:54,297
fact that it was a set of

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00:06:54,312 --> 00:06:55,944
rules that could be checked.

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You needed a pass issued by the

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00:06:58,474 --> 00:07:01,576
imperial household department to enter the palace.

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The shop's owner had to post a

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personal bond — putting his own estate behind

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every single ingredient. Delivery had a deadline:

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once every three months, without delay.

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00:07:15,003 --> 00:07:18,415
And at every step — selecting, mixing,

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preparing — someone was watching.

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Those rules ran for one hundred and

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eighty-eight years, through eight emperors — Yongzheng,

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Qianlong, Jiaqing, Daoguang, Xianfeng, Tongzhi, Guangxu,

155
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Xuantong — until the dynasty fell.

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Where did the money come from?

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This has to be said carefully.

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No source I can find proves that

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supplying the palace brought a specific number

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of customers. What the sources do show

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00:07:47,165 --> 00:07:50,591
is something else: the firm's reputation stopped

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being something it could assert about itself.

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A Qing-dynasty notebook leaves one line

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travellers from the provinces arriving in the

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00:07:59,253 --> 00:08:03,312
capital bought Tongrentang's medicines, its borax paste

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00:08:03,400 --> 00:08:05,356
and its Wanying pills above all,

167
00:08:06,003 --> 00:08:07,341
as gifts to take home.

168
00:08:07,797 --> 00:08:10,282
The buyers were travellers, buying to give

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00:08:10,297 --> 00:08:12,959
away. A medicine bought as a gift

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has left the shop's own street and

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gone home in someone else's luggage

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reputation travelling without the shop saying a

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word.The other half of the money

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came from how the shop was built:

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front shop, back workshop.

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Medicine sold at the front, made at

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the back — the workshop stood on West Damochang Street,

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mixing pills, powders, ointments and pellets in-house,

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00:08:37,385 --> 00:08:39,179
under the rules laid down in that

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00:08:39,194 --> 00:08:42,915
1706 formula book. Counter and workbench were

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00:08:42,929 --> 00:08:45,547
one business, and the customer could see

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the whole of it from the doorway.So

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00:08:47,488 --> 00:08:49,679
why did these shops all gather outside

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00:08:49,694 --> 00:08:52,032
the front gate?In the Yongle reign

185
00:08:52,047 --> 00:08:54,826
this area was called langfang — the name

186
00:08:54,841 --> 00:08:56,871
itself says the buildings were put up

187
00:08:56,885 --> 00:08:58,959
by the court to attract merchants.

188
00:08:59,429 --> 00:09:02,224
Under the Qing, Manchu and Chinese were

189
00:09:02,238 --> 00:09:06,753
housed separately: no markets, no theatres inside

190
00:09:06,768 --> 00:09:09,621
the inner city, so trade pushed outward.

191
00:09:10,091 --> 00:09:12,503
The provincial guild halls were built here

192
00:09:12,518 --> 00:09:15,753
too. A merchant arriving from another province

193
00:09:15,768 --> 00:09:18,415
lodged at his guild hall, found people

194
00:09:18,429 --> 00:09:20,709
from home, learned the rules of the

195
00:09:20,724 --> 00:09:23,032
trade — all of it running on that

196
00:09:23,047 --> 00:09:25,797
one network.Add the temple fair at

197
00:09:25,812 --> 00:09:28,518
the Guandi temple outside Zhengyang Gate:

198
00:09:29,297 --> 00:09:31,429
the days pilgrims came were the days

199
00:09:31,444 --> 00:09:35,209
customers came. Courting merchants, the divided city,

200
00:09:35,238 --> 00:09:37,326
the guild halls, the temple fair

201
00:09:38,076 --> 00:09:39,871
four things stacked on top of each

202
00:09:39,885 --> 00:09:41,885
other, and the street is what they

203
00:09:41,900 --> 00:09:42,812
stack into.

204
00:09:43,980 --> 00:09:46,024
But the people doing the daily work

205
00:09:46,039 --> 00:09:48,245
in these shops were not the owners.

206
00:09:48,716 --> 00:09:51,201
Entering an old firm as an apprentice

207
00:09:51,216 --> 00:09:53,716
usually took an introduction from someone from

208
00:09:53,730 --> 00:09:56,172
your home district and a signed contract

209
00:09:56,186 --> 00:09:59,024
with a master. You began with sweeping

210
00:09:59,039 --> 00:10:01,245
the floor and watching the counter.

211
00:10:01,716 --> 00:10:03,319
The term of service had a name

212
00:10:03,333 --> 00:10:05,936
of its own: "three years and one

213
00:10:05,951 --> 00:10:09,936
festival" — three years, plus one more solar

214
00:10:09,951 --> 00:10:12,480
term. Note the extra season.

215
00:10:12,936 --> 00:10:14,480
The old trade would not let you

216
00:10:14,495 --> 00:10:16,613
stop on the day you finished learning;

217
00:10:17,039 --> 00:10:19,466
you worked one season past competence,

218
00:10:19,730 --> 00:10:21,466
so nobody could say you left the

219
00:10:21,480 --> 00:10:22,819
moment you were useful.

220
00:10:23,289 --> 00:10:25,583
Craft passed by word of mouth and

221
00:10:25,598 --> 00:10:28,686
by hand.How large was the system?

222
00:10:29,157 --> 00:10:33,039
In the Republican period, one garment-workers' association

223
00:10:33,054 --> 00:10:38,760
counted 13,300 workers — and 5,500 apprentices.

224
00:10:39,245 --> 00:10:41,642
In an ordinary trade, three or four

225
00:10:41,657 --> 00:10:43,510
masters to one apprentice.

226
00:10:43,980 --> 00:10:46,304
The rules were also written into the

227
00:10:46,319 --> 00:10:50,539
accounts. Old firms commonly kept three-settlement books:

228
00:10:51,157 --> 00:10:54,554
accounts closed at Dragon Boat, Mid-Autumn and

229
00:10:54,569 --> 00:10:57,392
the New Year. A long-standing customer in

230
00:10:57,407 --> 00:10:59,583
good standing could open a ledger and

231
00:10:59,598 --> 00:11:02,363
buy on credit — credit running on the

232
00:11:02,377 --> 00:11:04,554
same clock as the shop's own year.

233
00:11:05,695 --> 00:11:08,430
Through the Republican years the medicine shop

234
00:11:08,460 --> 00:11:11,077
was still trading outside the front gate.

235
00:11:11,533 --> 00:11:13,710
But the city around it changed its

236
00:11:13,724 --> 00:11:17,916
name first.In 1928 the government moved south

237
00:11:17,930 --> 00:11:21,401
and Beijing was renamed Beiping — centuries of

238
00:11:21,416 --> 00:11:25,254
capital status, gone. Beiping had lived on

239
00:11:25,268 --> 00:11:27,445
the spending of the imperial clan,

240
00:11:27,768 --> 00:11:30,151
the banner households and the officials;

241
00:11:30,548 --> 00:11:32,695
it was a political consumption city.

242
00:11:33,180 --> 00:11:35,739
When the capital left, the spending left

243
00:11:35,754 --> 00:11:38,092
with it. The newspapers of the day

244
00:11:38,107 --> 00:11:41,004
put it plainly: within half a year

245
00:11:41,018 --> 00:11:43,386
there was "population falling by the day,

246
00:11:43,960 --> 00:11:46,710
commerce failing by the day", and closed

247
00:11:46,724 --> 00:11:50,063
shops multiplied.That is the whole lesson

248
00:11:50,077 --> 00:11:51,813
of this act in miniature.

249
00:11:52,268 --> 00:11:54,268
The shops had not got worse at

250
00:11:54,283 --> 00:11:57,018
their work. The customers they had been

251
00:11:57,033 --> 00:11:59,224
built to serve stopped arriving.

252
00:11:59,695 --> 00:12:01,651
A business that had spent two hundred

253
00:12:01,666 --> 00:12:03,842
years getting the rules right could still

254
00:12:03,857 --> 00:12:05,945
be undone by a change in what

255
00:12:05,960 --> 00:12:07,166
the city was for.

256
00:12:07,592 --> 00:12:10,769
After 1937 it was harder still.

257
00:12:11,239 --> 00:12:14,166
The collaborationist regime ran grain rationing;

258
00:12:14,857 --> 00:12:16,974
the ration was a "mixed flour" cut

259
00:12:16,989 --> 00:12:18,577
with bean cake and bran.

260
00:12:19,048 --> 00:12:21,504
Cloth and other goods were brought under

261
00:12:21,518 --> 00:12:23,960
cartel control at fixed prices.

262
00:12:24,430 --> 00:12:26,710
For a pastry house like Daoxiangcun,

263
00:12:27,151 --> 00:12:30,327
oil, sugar, flour and rice were all

264
00:12:30,342 --> 00:12:33,210
held back, and turnover fell month after

265
00:12:33,224 --> 00:12:38,695
month. Quanjude held on until 1948, then inflation

266
00:12:38,710 --> 00:12:41,195
and officers who ate without paying nearly

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finished it.The real turn came in

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the 1950s.In 1954 Tongrentang became the first

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firm in Beijing's medicine trade to enter

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joint state-private ownership. In January 1956 the whole

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city followed, and in a single day

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17,963 private businesses changed their character.

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The method was to assess the assets,

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fix the shares, pay a fixed rate

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of interest, and run the firm jointly.

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One requirement was quite specific: during the

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transition, keep the existing way of producing

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and trading as far as possible

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because the value of an old firm

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lay precisely in those unchanged rules.

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That instruction is itself evidence.

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Someone, at the time, understood that the

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rules were the asset.

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The change came anyway.

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In the early years of joint operation

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some old firms cut their range and

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quality wobbled. That was written into later

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research reports, and it produced protective measures:

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traditional lines were to be kept,

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old techniques retained, old masters supported.

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Today the system still sets a price

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on the old names.

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In September 2023 the Ministry of Commerce and

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four other departments published the results of

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00:14:05,430 --> 00:14:07,827
their review of China Time-Honoured Brands:

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of 1,128 names, 1,000 passed, 73 passed

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with conditions, and 55 were removed.

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Note the word removed.

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The official wording is not "struck off".

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Removed means it used to be on

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the list. Getting on took history.

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Staying on depends on whether those rules

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are still being kept.

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The Ministry of Commerce named its first

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batch of China Time-Honoured Brands in 2006.

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In 2011 Dashilan was designated the country's first

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"China Time-Honoured Brand cluster".

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Figures from the Xicheng district people's congress

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in 2022 put twenty-six such names in this

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area; by 2024 Beijing as a whole had

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00:14:56,327 --> 00:15:00,151
274.Read one way, those numbers are

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a scorecard. Read another: everyone still on

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the list is someone who has not

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yet lost the rules.

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And the "three years and one festival"

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never stopped. Tongrentang runs a master-technician studio

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00:15:14,989 --> 00:15:19,548
today, where intangible-heritage inheritors take apprentices for

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00:15:19,562 --> 00:15:22,062
a full three years before they qualify.

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00:15:22,533 --> 00:15:25,283
Neiliansheng still works one master to one

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apprentice, and in 2008 its thousand-layer cloth-soled shoemaking

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00:15:30,401 --> 00:15:33,209
entered the national list of intangible cultural

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heritage. The names changed.

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The rules are still running.

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If you want to go: take subway

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Line 2 or Line 8 to Qianmen

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station, leave by the southwest exit,

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00:15:45,768 --> 00:15:49,989
walk north into Dashilan Street. The east end meets Xianyu

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Kou, and that stretch holds Duyichu,

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00:15:53,165 --> 00:15:56,886
Bianyifang, Tianxingju and Changchuntang as well.

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00:15:57,342 --> 00:15:59,430
The street is not only shops.

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Daguanlou, Sanqingyuan, Guangdelou — the cinemas and opera

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00:16:04,636 --> 00:16:06,165
houses are here too.

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00:16:06,651 --> 00:16:11,798
The Ruifuxiang facade, Qianxiangyi, Xiangyihao and the

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00:16:11,812 --> 00:16:14,636
old industrial hall are listed as Major

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Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the

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00:16:17,562 --> 00:16:21,577
National Level, under the heading "Dashilan commercial

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00:16:21,592 --> 00:16:24,856
buildings".What is protected is not just

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the buildings. It is the way of

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00:16:27,415 --> 00:16:29,577
doing business that lived in them.

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00:16:30,712 --> 00:16:33,242
Dashilan put this city's other order on

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00:16:33,256 --> 00:16:37,065
display: not who holds power, but who

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00:16:37,080 --> 00:16:38,639
can be trusted to keep it.

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00:16:39,109 --> 00:16:41,359
From one pill, one pair of shoes,

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00:16:41,389 --> 00:16:43,550
one bolt of cloth, one duck,

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00:16:43,992 --> 00:16:46,977
Beijing accumulated something harder to demolish than

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a city wall — credit.

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00:16:48,742 --> 00:16:51,433
A wall is defended by whoever holds

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it at the time.

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Credit is defended by everyone who ever

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gave it.And the story of this

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00:16:58,212 --> 00:16:59,947
street is not finished.

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Walk further, and it is Beijing after 1860

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which needs a different set of questions.

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This is our reading, not the record

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00:17:09,544 --> 00:17:12,411
of the histories. The full transcript is

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at sylogs.com.