Qianshi Hutong. Photo: Yin Yeping

Located around Dashilan commercial road, just to the west of the disastrous "historical" refurbishment that is Qianmen main road, lies Qianshi Hutong, a quiet, shabby lane ignored by the traffic around it. It wasn't always like this.

Long before Wangfujing became the swaggering parade of luxury it is today, Qianshi was the place to go for moneychangers during the Qing Dynasty. All manner of social backgrounds gathered in the lane to barter currency, mainly copper, although the feudal government of the time had restricted tax payments to just silver. Qianshi was the financial center of monetary exchange, and also home to 26 mints producing coin for almost every bank in the city. During the 1900 Boxer Revolution against the Western Powers, a fire swept the area, reducing these banks and mints to ashes. As a result, most of the current housing here dates back to the late Qing period at most.

Copper factories were built here, with workshops located in the jewelry market busy turning the raw product into valuables. It was only after the establishment of the Republic in 1949 that the lane lost its function due to the reformation of the monetary system. As paper money replaced the old-style currency, the previous high demand for precious metals shrank.

Banks such as Da Tong or Wan Feng expanded their buildings towards the hutong's center in the late Qing turn-of-the-century period, and the lane became the narrowest in Beijing. Qianshi is currently 55 meters long but just 70 centimeter wide for the most part, with the lane squeezing in the middle to just 40 centimeters. Should two people meet while walking, one has to stand to the side to let the other through. At the very end of the hutong is a big house with many smaller ones inside, where up to 10 families squeeze in.

Glimpses of its old role as a stronghold of finance can be seen from a glance at windows equipped with iron bars today, although today Qianshi is purely residential. The lane's dead-end is protected from fire by hydrants at either side of the entrance, though, perhaps due to its size problem, it seems a very private, almost uncomfortable place today, and certainly a far cry from the bustle of yesteryear.

Indeed, when I tried to talk to an old woman with her door open, she immediately stopped me with the warning, "Don't step inside!" After I explained myself, she relaxed and filled me in on the mystery of this cramped hutong. Seventy-year-old Peng has lived here for decades, and explained that the exceptional narrow width was designed for thief-proofing. "Also, as it's always been a valuable area, no extra space was spared in building," she remarked. This contradicted what I'd been told about the banks being to blame, but then history is always a mass of contradictions, especially with these hutong. Where the past is so rapidly overbuilt, it's particularly hard to keep track.