The land that time recalls

Daxu bazaar has seen better days. It used to be a major trading center on the Lijiang River waterway. Li Yang reports in Guilin of Guangxi that it is making somewhat of a tourist revival.

Daxu bazaar prospered for 1,000 years as part of the Lijiang River waterway, but today all that remains are memories and some wood buildings, bridges and wharves. Located on the north bank of Lijiang River in Lingchuan county, Guilin, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, local businessmen there have capitalized on Daxu's colorful past, which has become a popular tourist attraction in recent years. The bazaar is a 2.5-km-long and 4-meter-wide street built in the early Song Dynasty (960-1279). The government established a taxation bureau in Daxu in the late Song, and up until the 1940s most of its 15,000 residents were businessmen.

They sold ginkgo, sesame, chestnut, tung oil, pearl barley, garlic bolts, bamboo shoots, dried fish from Hunan, Jiangxi and Guangdong provinces, and transported kerosene, matches, cloth and other products to inner China.