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What Can You Buy with Your Cash?
Associated to Place: AncientWorlds > The Orient > China > Kaifeng > Mahang Street > articles -- by * Feiyan Zhou (78 Articles), Historical Article
What Can You Buy with Your Cash?





The common name for the Chinese cash coin may have evolved from the Tamil word, kasu, or it may be an English derivative from the French caisse. In use from the second century BC to the twentieth century AD, these coins were mostly made from iron, brass and copper. Silver and gold coins existed, but they were rare. The first cash coins had a round hole in the center, which became a square one in the Qin dynasty. This was for stringing your hoard together to carry it more easily. Or for hiding it, depending on your nature.

The coins were hand cast or made from molds. Both methods were labor intensive. Some early coins were made into fanciful shapes - bridges, bells, fishes, weapons, shells and tools. Later molds looked sort of like a tree with round fruits at the ends of the branches. Molten metal was poured into the mold and pooled in the round "fruit" parts of it. Once this cooled, the coins were cut out and filed to rid them of any imperfections.


Equivalencies
One hundred grains of millet (sure, they sat around counting those out) were equal to one zhu, which in turn was equal to one tael, a measure of weight. While cash coins could be made of many metals, the most commonly used by the people in the streets was made of copper. The imperial equivalency of this coin was equal to about one thousandth of a tael of silver, which weighed about 38 grams. To put that into perspective, a tael of silver could buy one bolt of silk. So could 1000 copper cash coins.

The official government unit was a string of one thousand cash, but most people never had that many to string together. Just as well, since the thousand cash string weighed over one and a half pounds. The common market unit was a hundred, which in actuality was somewhat less that one hundred cash coins, depending on what you wanted to buy, but this worked as a method of pricing.

For example: If you wanted to buy gold and silver, the rate of exchange was 74 cash. For fish, vegetables and pork, the rate was 72 cash. For gems and pearls, and female domestic servants, the rate was 68. Copying documents was worth 56 cash.

If you were a clerk or a soldier in the early Northern Song dynasty, your yearly pay would have been five iron coins. If you owned land, your tax on it would have been one iron coin, which in this instance, was equal to one bronze one. But if you wanted to trade your iron coins for bronze coins, you'd have needed ten iron ones for just the one bronze one. A very inconsistent method of exchange this, but apparently it worked.

By the Song dynasty, the coins became hard to come by, due to the slow process of making them, their being exported in foreign trade, and to a shortage of copper. The Song solved this problem with their invention of paper money. The coins were still widely used, but it did take some of the pressure off the coin manufacturers.


Take a look at some Northern Song Dynasty Coins

And Coins from many Chinese dynasties



Sources
Jaques Gernet. Daily Life in China. MacMillan, 1962.
wiki-Cash (Chinese Coin)
wiki-Ancient Chinese Coinage
The China Song Dynasty Coin
Sea Eagle Coins

Image by mc599, adapted by Feiyan Zhou, and used in accordance with the creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License
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Posted Oct 20, 2009 - 22:54 , Last Edited: Jul 9, 2010 - 23:49











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