Riches to rags: Inside Beijing’s first stock exchange

More than 100 years ago, this grand building was a thriving hotbed of finance – dozens of traders bought and sold currencies, stocks and bonds.

Today, the first stock exchange in China is unloved and dilapidated – its arched roof and brick walls providing a low-cost home to eight families. It’s a riches to rags transformation that many of the building’s residents are only vaguely aware of.

“I never feel I live in a historical building; I’m only afraid that it would one day collapse,” resident Xiao Xiaoxiao told CNN.

Xiao moved into a 20-square-meter room on the first floor of the site seven years ago when she got married. Her subdivided apartment sits at the entrance of the building and she keeps an eye on comings and goings from her screen door.

Her neighbors are noisy and the old building regularly springs leaks, she said.

“But I’m used to it now,” Xiao said with a shrug. “A house of gold or silver is never as good as my own tumbledown home.”

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Built in 1918, this two-story brick-wood construction was the very first securities exchange owned and run by Chinese. Today, the crumbling dwelling is home to eight families.

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The first floor was the business hall, which was divided down the middle with five open rooms. Various additions constructed by resident families now occupy the hall, leaving only a narrow pathway for people to pass through.

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The second floor, which hovers over the main hall, was surrounded by a gallery. It's now divided into different living areas.

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The site has since served as makeshift dorms for various institutions and residents. Most of the families now living inside it are empty nesters who've lived here for decades. Stock trading ceased when the Communist Party took over China.

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The interior design was a fusion of Chinese and Western styles, as indicated by the wooden pilasters and intricately designed iron fence that lines the gallery.

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Xu Yang (left) and Xiao Xiaoxiao have lived here for years. Their home is a handed-down 20-square-meter room near the entrance of the former stock exchange building.

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The couple has reconstructed the 5-meter-tall room, carving out space for a bathroom and a play loft for their 3-year-old son, Abu. The family had a 3-meter-wide bed made after Abu was born.

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Xiao lifts up her son's cartoon carpets to show the only trace of the building's history in their home -- the original wooden floor.

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Their neighbor Liu Junrong, 54, has been a resident since 1989.

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Liu has a spacious apartment on the outskirts of Beijing but keeps this place for its convenience. The building is tucked away in Beijing's Qianmen area -- a commerce center a century ago and currently a popular touristy pedestrian mall in central Beijing.

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Liu's inlaws lived inside this building before they passed away. The couple came from wealthy families and were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. This wedding photo, taken in the early 1940s and hanging on the wall of their room, is the only one that survived the Cultural Revolution, when a Western-style wedding photo would be destroyed because it was "bourgeois."

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After changing hands multiple times, the building's ownership is now unclear to residents. Because of this, residents say that an ongoing underground pipeline leakage has never been attended to by any institution or government body.

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"I never feel I live in a historical building; I'm only afraid that it would one day collapse," resident Xiao Xiaoxiao told CNN.

Capitalist symbol

Established in 1918, the Central China Stock Exchange was the first of its kind run by Chinese. Stock trading took place years earlier in the treaty port of Shanghai but those exchanges were run by Western or Japanese powers that occupied the city.

In 1948, trading stopped.

The very embodiment of capitalism, a stock exchange was an anathema to the Chinese Communists who took power in 1949. The building changed hands multiple times in the following decades. In the days of China’s planned economy, it was allocated as public housing for workers.

The building’s ownership is now unclear to residents.

Lucky?

Located in Qianmen, Beijing’s ancient heart, the building has been lucky to dodge the wrecking ball.

Thousands of heritage buildings, narrow lanes and old residential courtyard homes in Beijing have been demolished over the past five decades, transforming Beijing from an imperial walled city to a modern metropolis.

In more recent years, there’s been resurgence of interest in China’s architectural heritage. Not far away from the old stock exchange is the Temple Theater Opera House – a well-preserved venue for traditional Peking Opera.

There’s talk that the stock exchange building may receive protection but there’s no concrete plan.

Beijing Xicheng District Government launched a restoration project in 2014 to modify historical buildings on the street on which the stock exchange sits, according to the government’s website.

For some residents, the old building still possesses an allure missing in the modern high-rise blocks that have sprung up elsewhere in the capital.

The building is close to everything – public schools, hospitals, banks, subway stations.

Xiao’s neighbor Liu Junrong, 54, a resident here since 1989, has a spacious apartment on the outskirts of Beijing, but can’t bring herself to leave.

“The old people who have lived here their entire lives probably would want to die here,” said Xiao.

Getting there: Beijing’s former Central China Securities Exchange is located at 196 Xiheyan Street. To get there by subway, head for Hepingmen Station on Line 2.

Video shot and edited by CNN’s Justin Robertson. Follow him on Twitter @CNN_JUSTIN