Xintai Building of Russian Merchants in Hankou

At the corner of Yanjiang Avenue and Lanling Road in Wuhan, a 31-meter-tall monument of reinforced concrete stands as a physical record of the global tea trade. This is the Xintai Building, completed in 1924. The story of this site began in 1866, when Russian merchants Tokmakoff and Molotkoff founded the Xintai Brick Tea Factory, one of the earliest modern industrial operations in Hankou. The business grew into one of the four dominant Russian firms exporting compressed brick tea along the Great Tea Road to Siberia. In November 1890, the firm celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary, hosting Russian Crown Prince Nicholas, who was received by the Chinese Viceroy Zhang Zhidong.

The original brick office on this riverfront site was demolished in 1921, following the collapse of Russian trade after the 1917 Revolution. British merchants—operating as the Asiatic Trading Co., Ltd.—took over the operations, commissioning the architectural firm Hemmings & Berkley (Jingming Yanghang) and the Yongmao Chang Construction Factory to build the current five-story Classical-style structure.

The building is designed around an interior atrium. Visitors entering the corner door encounter a grand, cool marble staircase that spirals upward to the top floor. The exterior displays a classic three-part division. The ground floor features a heavy, rough-textured rusticated granite facade, and the upper levels are finished in smooth imitation stone. Giant columns dominate the central facade, and Ionic pilasters rise toward the roof. The interior was originally finished in the Russian architectural style, with decorative emblems adorning the stairways. At the very top, a prominent sagittal dome tower anchors the street corner against the sky. When it opened, the building offered modern comforts, including elevators, central heating, and sanitation facilities.

Today, the structure serves as the office for the Design Institute of the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration, preserving a century of commercial history in its stone and concrete bones. Designated as a Hubei Provincial Cultural Relics Protection Unit in 2008 and later incorporated into the eighth batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units as part of the "Hankou Modern Building Complex" in 2019, the Xintai Building remains a vital witness to the rise and fall of the tea trade along the historic Great Tea Road.