The Rishengchang ("Sunrise Prosperity") exchange shop opened in 1823 — the first institution in China to offer money transfers via paper draft (piaohao), allowing merchants to deposit silver in one city and withdraw it in another without physically transporting the metal. Within decades, Pingyao had over twenty such institutions; by the late 19th century they controlled the movement of money across the entire Qing empire. This building is where modern Chinese banking effectively began.
The museum now occupying the original premises is organized around the working practices of the piaohao: the counting rooms with their abacuses and ledgers, the secure rooms where silver was weighed and stored, the dormitories where clerks lived, and the courtyard where transactions were conducted. The descriptions in both Chinese and English are unusually good for a Chinese museum.
The most impressive section explains the security system: how drafts were coded to prevent forgery, how trusted agents were established in distant cities, and how the Shanxi merchant families who controlled the system maintained trust across thousands of miles and multiple generations. The building and its story are both genuinely extraordinary.