Luo Zhewen, president of the Association of China's Historical Relics, said during his February inspection of the city, "Hongjiang is a unique ancient commercial city which has somehow survived until now in its original appearance. It is a living specimen of Chinese capitalism in embryo."

The ancient city had 15 old-style Chinese banking houses, seven banks, 17 newspapers, eight storehouses for tung oil, 10 great guild halls, 44 wharfs, more than 30 opium clubs, 40 brothels and 60 temples, schools, trade fairs and posts together showing the city's past prosperity.

Hongjiang covers an area of 100,000 square meters and has more than 1,000 ancient commercial buildings. It has 6,000 inhabitants of whom 85 percent are elderly. They all are crowded into 380 large wooden houses arranged like the character #.

All these houses which are known as "Yinziwu" were built from the 14th to 19th centuries. They have gray roofs, white walls and carved wooden windows in a dark brown that remind you of past times.

The old city was discovered last year. Experts have found it was famous for its trade in tung oil, wood, opium and white wax. But the prosperity disappeared with the development of modern road transportation and the falling off of water transport.

As recorded in the county annals, Hongjiang's situation at the confluence of the two rivers of Yuanjiang and Wujiang made it a prosperous port along the only passage for transportation between the west and east of China. From 14th to 19th century, it was a commercial port linking five provinces.

In the 1850s, the quantity of tung oil handled was as high as 7,000 tons with a value of more than one million taels of silver, said Hong Zheng, member of the leading group for the publishing of ancient books. From this port, raw materials were transported from west to east and salt, cloth and general merchandises from east to west.

Historians and economists found in the city the capitalism in embryo. The accumulation of capital was accomplished by the exploiting of hired labor just as in other coastal cities like Suzhou and Hangzhou in the 16-17th century.

Some cities such as Yibin, Wuhan, Chongqing and Shanghai developed in the same way as Hongjiang with the difference that they have all become modernized, said Deng Wei, an expert on the world's heritage.

Hongjiang was prosperous for the last time during World War II. Of a population of the 37,600 inhabitants, 13,000 were businessmen, and 1,300 stores were run by merchants coming from all over the country and also from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.

Shen Congwen, famous Chinese writer of the region wrote in his work: "On the Yuanjiang River, the biggest boats are from Hongjiang. These huge vessels are very colorful with gold lacquer. Going down the river, they can carry 4,000 pails of tung oil or 2,000 bales of cotton. On each boat there are at most 40 seamen and 60 or 70 boat trackers." As written in the water course report of Hunan in 1938, there were normally 511 such boats gathered in Hongjiang.

Luo Zhewen told the Xinhua News Agency that it was its special situation that made Hongjiang prosperous in the past. It can serve as a specimen of China's modern trade development and will occupy a certain place in the world's commercial and architectural history.

(Xinhua News Agency June 30, 2002)