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It it well known that the traffic was very inconvenient in ancient times, thus long distance trip could be a little risky and dangerous. That's when escrot agency came to swtich the situation. People especially businesmen paid for their trip to the escort agency then hit the road with some great kongfu guys safeguarding them and their items. Pingyao was a place with large population and less land, therefore a ton of the locals decided to go outside and make their fortune. When they were rich, they would bring the money home, at this time a escort agency was needed in case they bumped into some robbers.
The escort agency usually take water route and land route. Land route has south and north route, south is mostly the plain area, north is more like desert and prairie.A great safe guard requires a lot of good abilities. Not only he need to master great Kongfu, but also need to read the lips, as known as jargon, to communicate with robbers and stealers in distanct mountain areas.
Stepping in the musum, the first thing come into sight are some ancient guarding carts. One special character of these carts is they only got two wheels, also called two-wheel cart. It might be a little difficult to keep balance of such carts, but it is covenenient when using on bumpy mountain road. Above the cart stands a small triangle flag, with the first name of the head safe guard on it. By doing this, the robber know who they are dealing with when they try to start a fight, if it’s from a famous escort agency, they probabaly would just escape.
Here tourists can see the ten most famous escort agencies in ancient China, each one got some awesome safeguards. Inside the room there exhibits a lot cool ancient weapons, some of them are so rare that I could put a finger on it. Just looking at their name already gives me chills, heart-digging claw, square-sky drawn spears, and the heaviest one called octagonal hammer.
Those safeguards are good at fight on horse, or in a cart, with various weapons such as spears, knives, arrows and others. If they found there was thistles and thorns on the road, they knew some robbers hiding somewhere and a fight was coming up next. Generally speaking, for those who wants to run a successful escrot agency, there are three baisc neccessities: having government as a rock solid back, ability of handling well with robbers, mastering great kongfu. Missing one you wouldn’t make a great safeguard.