![]() Kauris were used for paying for goods, workmen and soldiers. The Kauri shells were pierced and threaded onto strings. The Kauri shell, known as “bei”, is an import from the coastal regions of the eastern and southern Chinese Sea and is considered to be the first prominent means of payment in Ancient China. The inscriptions on these bronze plates tell us that China was ruled by dynasties of kings: by the Shang dynasty from 1600 B.C., and the Zhou dynasty from 1100 B.C.īack then, bartering was a common way of doing business. In those ancient times, this whole area was inhabited by peasants and warriors. On its Great Plain the origins of Chinese culture emerged, and this was also where the great history of Chinese money originated. One of these rivers is the Huanghe, the Yellow River. It is, therefore, no wonder that Chinese mythology tells of rulers turning the soil into farmland and regulating the rivers. The commentaries by Dagmar Lorenz, sinologist and author of the DVD, complete the small tour d'horizon.Ĭhina – thousands of years of civilization.Īncient China lived on agriculture: the country’s crops were vital to its affluence and stability. This and other kinds of money from the Middle Kingdom are presented here in their historical context. And yet the history of its money has been characterised by its unique stability – cowry currency and the cash coin, for example, were in circulation for many centuries. The same can be said of China's money: in the course of its long development from a small cultural island on the Yellow River to the People's Republic, the Land of the Dragon has witnessed many forms of money come and go. States come and go," Luo Guanzhong wrote in his novel The Three Kingdoms. The last Chinese dynasty, founded by the Manchu from the region of Manchuria."Kingdoms wax and wane. Notable for China’s wealth and the opening of direct trade with Portugal and other European nations. Southern Song (1127 – 1279) - introduced use of regnal years on some coinsįounded by the Mongols under Kublai Khan.New styles of calligraphy introduced on coinage Tong bao (“circulating treasure”) coinage and use of mint names introduced.Ĭharacterized by Chinese political fragmentation and the rise of short-lived dynasties competing for control of a unified empire. Reign titles (nien-hao) were introduced on coins.Ī short-lived dynasty that reunited China.Ĭonsidered the Chinese “Golden Age.” Chinese culture and coinage spread throughout the Far East. The Unified Chinese Empire was divided among three competing kingdoms that further fragmented after 280 into a series of Northern and Southern Chinese dynasties. Three Kingdoms, and Northern and Southern Dynasties Cast-bronze imitations of knives, cowries and spadesīan liang coins, featuring square hole in center, introduced.This format became fixed in Chinese coinage until the end of the empire with only minor variations between dynasties. 621 introduced the classic form of Chinese coin with four characters that identified the date of issue and its intent as a circulating currency. This coin style became standard for the next 700 years. the Han emperor Wu Di issued a new form of coin known as wu zhu (“5 grain”), which incorporated a raised rim on the outer and inner edges of the coin. These bronze coins incorporated a two-character legend that identified the weight of the coin. With the establishment of a unified empire under the Qin dynasty in 221 B.C., Chinese money settled on a single form - the classic round pan liang (or ban liang: “½ ounce”) coin with a square hole in the middle. – 210 B.C.), destroyed as many records of earlier Chinese kingdoms as he could to ensure the stability of his new empire. This is because the first emperor of the unified Chinese Empire (founded in 221 B.C.), Qin Shi Huang (259 B.C. No one is quite sure when money was invented in China. These first “coins” were followed by what became the basic form for Oriental coinage for the next 2,300 years: a round cast metal disc with a hole in the center. The first Chinese objects that can be called coins are the bronze “spade” and “knife” money that were first produced around the 7th to 6th centuries B.C., at about the same time that coinage first appeared in Asia Minor.
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