Shuyuanmen

This guide to Shuyuanmen in Xi'an starts with a land deal signed one October morning in 1609, when two Ming officials handed a plot to Feng Congwu, a disgraced scholar so blunt he once scolded the Wanli Emperor to his face and lost his post for it. You'll hear how Feng spent thirty years teaching for free at a nearby temple until his crowds convinced officials Wang Kesou and Li Tianlin to build him the Guanzhong Academy, one of the country's most respected schools, right on this lane. Listen for how the street kept that name for three centuries before the trade running along it changed completely in the 1990s.