Liulichang, the scholars' street

In front of you stretches Liúlíchǎng, “the glazed tile works”. There is nothing literary about the name, yet for more than two centuries this has been Beijing's street of books, calligraphy and painting.

1An imperial kiln

Under the Mongols there was a kiln here that fired glazed tiles. Under the Ming it became one of the five great works of the Ministry of Works, and many of the yellow tiles that cover the palaces came from here. When the city grew up around it, the kilns moved out of town, but the name stayed.

2The scholars' quarter

Under the Qing, many officials and exam candidates from the south lodged in this part of the city. When, from 1773, the Qianlong Emperor ordered the compilation of the Siku Quanshu, the largest collection of books in Chinese history, the scholars working on it came here hunting for rare editions. Bookshops multiplied, and with them the sellers of brushes, ink, paper and inkstones: the “four treasures of the study”.

Lu Xun, the great 20th-century writer, often walked this street, as he records in his own diary.

In 1926 a new avenue cut the street into an eastern and a western half. In the 1980s the façades were rebuilt. The most famous house, Rongbaozhai, descends from a paper shop of the Kangxi era and is renowned for its woodblock reproductions of paintings.

3What to look for

• The brush displays, sorted by size and type of hair.
• The black and gold signboards, many in the calligraphy of famous people.
• The stone seals, carved to order.