大唐西市

This guide to the Tang West Market museum in Xi'an, once the busiest marketplace on earth with up to a hundred fifty thousand people passing through daily, follows the foreign traders known as Hu, Persians, Sogdians and Arabs, who ran its moneychanging counters, jewelry stalls and licensed brokerages under the watch of imperial price inspectors. It traces the single night in 835 when fire burned the entire market down to its foundations. The guide considers what archaeologists found still lying beneath the ground centuries later.