Introduction to the second exhibition room: During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the two most famous business gangs in the country were Shanxi merchants and Hui merchants, and Pingyao merchants were an important force of Shanxi merchants, spread all over the country, and are still among the people today. There is a popular saying: "Pingyao people are where the sparrows fly." As early as the Han Dynasty, Pingyao was an important commodity distribution center in Shanxi. Later, after successive generations of development and city expansion, many wealthy people from neighboring counties also came to Pingyao to set up stalls. There is a saying that "Pingyao City can't be filled and can't be filled"; by the middle of the Qing Dynasty, At that time, Pingyao City was already a small city, but it had all five organs: banks, cloth shops, silk and satin shops, pharmacies, hotels, costume shops, etc., covering almost all business lines, and was unanimously praised as "Little Beijing". Due to the further development of the commodity economy, some large Shanxi merchants have formed a network with a head office in Shanxi and branch offices in other places. The cross-regional business organization system has led to more and more general and semi-colon, semi-colon and semi-colon, and large-scale wholesale, transportation and sales with customers, as well as huge amounts of cash shipments. Although the cash shipments are You can rely on the escort agency to escort you, but this wastes time, is expensive, and is sometimes unsafe along the way. Under such circumstances, a new payment method - bill number exchange - came into use.