The Rishengchang, or "Sunrise Prosperity", exchange shops. (Photo by Pete Marchetto/For chinadaily.com.cn)

For Li Daquan, life was good. A businessman in the Old Town of Pingyao in the early 1820s, Li had opened a dye shop. His products and services had proved both reliable and popular, and business was expanding with his new branch in Beijing, but Li was content to continue with Pingyao as his base of operations, too attached to his hometown to consider relocation to the capital.

One day, Li was approached by a friend about to undertake a hazardous journey to Beijing — hazardous because the road was lawless, and travelers came under frequent attack from the bandits who patroled the route. Li's friend wanted to carry a great deal of money with him, necessitating the expense of hiring protection for the length of his journey and knowing any amount of protection would prove inadequate against some of the stronger of the bandit gangs.

In the course of conversation, Li's friend made a proposition: What if he were to give Li the money then and there, Li were to write a letter for his Beijing branch and, upon arrival, Li's friend were to recoup his money from them?

The proposition served Li well. It would mean he himself did not need to transfer the money from Beijing to Pingyao, risking those same bandits. So it was that an agreement was reached, and both men retired from the conversation well satisfied.

The story may have ended there, but word got around. Before long, Li was approached by others who needed to travel the road to Beijing. They sought a similar favor. Indeed, so many approaches began to be made that Li decided to begin charging money for the service. As the custom grew, Li's dye business fell by the wayside. He opened new finance branches in other cities — the Rishengchang, or "Sunrise Prosperity", exchange shops. Before the end of the decade, several such branches were scattered across China's major cities.

Customers at Pingyao's Rishengchang exchange may have wondered where all the money was kept. Indeed, thieves may have observed the premises in the hope of trailing it back to Li's secret store, which they must have presumed was located somewhere safe elsewhere in the town. They would have failed to find any mysterious cache. The exchange business hid the money in plain view, in a room next to the exchange room itself, beneath its floorboards upon which furniture and carpets rested as if nothing of any great significance was to be found there.