The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is a hot tourism attraction in New York. Unlike the central park or other high-profile attractions in the Big Apple， this attraction is 24 meters down in the bedrock of Manhattan. It is the largest and most expensive storeroom in the world， a depository of 8，300 tons of gold， worth 234 billion US dollars at the last count. Recently I paid a visit to the gold vault.

The largest gold pile in the world

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is housed in an Italian style 14-storied granite building at 3 Liberty Street， New York， next to Wall Street. After passing through a security checkpoint， I entered the lobby， which is in an elegant style of new classicism of the 1920s. We were not to take a single photograph there and we were not to bring a piece of paper or a pen to the vault. We descended in an elevator not bit enough to take more than 10 people down to the fifth floor underground. Stepping out of the elevator， I found myself face a cavernous space as large as half a football pitch.

Eighty feet below the ground， the whole space is divided into 122 separate storerooms， all sitting on the granite bedrock of Manhattan. Watching around curiously， I suddenly remembered watching a movie about a group of bank robbers trying to break into this gold vault. Industrial insiders know and tourists will find out that the movie was a pure fiction and that it is simply impossible to invade the vault. The gold vault sits on the granite bedrock for another reason: the foundation has to be strong enough to endure the weight of gold stored there.

The only passage into the vault passes through a single steel door. It weighs 90 tons and measures 10 feet in thickness. It is probably the strongest door in the world. The structure that holds the door weighs 140 tons， several times heavier than a battle tank. Each storeroom has a padlock， two combination locks and a seal. The largest one can hold 107，000 gold ingots worth 15 billion US dollars. Such a pile measures 3 meters in height， 3 meters in width and more than 5 meters in length. Any entry into a storeroom must be under the supervision of a group of three people respectively from the accounting department， administrative department and security department.

A gold bar weighs 27 pounds or about 12 kilograms. A pile of ingots are heaped one upon another like bricks in a wall. There are two sorts of gold ingots. Those made before 1986 are in the shape of a rectangular brick and those made after 1986 are in the shape of a trapezoid， an ideal shape for building them into a pile. Each bar bears a mark showing its location， serial number and purity. The standard purity of a gold bar is within 99.9%， for pure gold is too soft to be moved around with ease. All the bars contain a tiny amount of copper or silver， consequently making them look slightly reddish or whitish. I stretched my arm through the fence and touched a few gold bars， trying to experience the gold touch of King Midas. They were cold. But the shiny surface produced a dizzy effect.

International transactions inside the vault

Although the vault is in the USA， most gold bars there belong to over 60 central banks and international monetary organizations. Each iron door has a serial number indicating a country or an organization. The bank keeps all the information on who-owns-how-much as top secret. The tour guide told us that the foreign governments keep these gold bars here free of charge. The bank charges a nominal fee only when a transaction is executed and gold bars are delivered from the seller’s storeroom to the buyer’s storeroom or move out of the vault. The Federal Reserve System is rich enough to offer this free storage service， for it makes an annual profit of 18 billion by trading American government bonds on the public market.

The vault is chosen by governments and banking organizations for storage for one reason: the Federal Reserve Bank of New York plays a leadership role in the United States and monetary transactions are convenient in the center of the world’s financial transactions.

The delivery of gold bars from one storeroom to another is a top-security activity. Once gold bars arrive at the bank， they are first put on wood pallets and carried by a secured elevator down to the vault under the monitoring of armed guards. Once the gold bars enter the vault， all the movements are under the supervision of the three-person group.

All the gold bars will be weighed and examined when they are checked into the vault. Bars are moved by an electricity-powered lift onto a weighing machine which looks old but is extremely accurate. The supervision group will then check the weights and serial numbers of the gold bars against a shipping list. We learned that the weighing machine is so sensitive that it is accurate down to the 1000th of an ounce. There is another electronic weighing scale for weighing smaller bars， but this one is much smaller in size. It is so sensitive that it is subject to drafts. So the air-conditioning must be turned down when it is in use. Moving gold bars is by no means a high-tech work， but these transport workers use a flat cart and wear magnesium shoes for protection in case a bar falls upon a foot. It is said that a single protective shoe costs 500 dollars.

Security

The security system that guards the vault is top-class. The door to the vault can be shut down within 28 seconds and the air inside can allow one man to survive 7-8 hours. The 90-ton solid door is manually controlled so that its operation will not be affected by power outage. It has never experienced any malfunction since its inception into service 1924. We learned that the door can be closed in seven seconds if an emergency materializes.

The bank building and the vault is secured by a private security company. Guards are on duty 24 hours a day and seven days a week. The well trained guards are armed with semi-automatic weapons and they watch every corner of the building within and without. It is said that many of them are masters of taekwondo and karate and that 70% of these guards are marksmen and uses all kinds of weapons with efficiency. Of course， the vault is monitored by a CCTV system and an electronic alert system. If the door is opened illegally， the central control room will be immediately alerted.

Since “9/11”， part of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has been in a shutdown state. Tourists who want to visit the vault must make appointments in advance and their applications are rigorously examined. Nowadays， what a tourist can see within the building is only part of what was shown before 9/11. A group of visiting tourists contains only about 15 people and the visit is restricted to no more than 30 minutes.□