But words relating to money can be seen daubed on the walls of various buildings, such as No. 4 and No. 10. I found written an old couplet:

Ju bao duo liu chuan bu xi,

Tai jie ping ci ri zhi sheng

Which roughly means that treasures come and go like streams and the future is splendid just as it is. From these, I garnered a sense of the past importance of this lane, and the equanimity with which my fellow Beijingers deal with the city's ever-shifting paths.