String of cash
A string of cash coins refers to a historical Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Ryukyuan, and Vietnamese currency unit that was used as a superunit of the Chinese cash, Japanese mon, Korean mun, Ryukyuan mon, and Vietnamese văn currencies. The square hole in the middle of cash coins served to allow for them to be strung together in strings. The term would later also be used on banknotes and served there as a superunit of wén.
Prior to the Song dynasty strings of cash coins were called , , or , while during the Ming and Qing dynasties they were called or . In Japan and Vietnam the term 貫 would continue to be used until the abolition of cash coins in those respective countries.
During the Qing dynasty a string of 1000 cash coins valued at 1 tael of silver, although variants of regional standards as low as 500 cash coins per string also existed. A total of 1000 coins strung together were referred to as a or and were accepted by traders and merchants per string because counting the individual coins would take too much time. The coins were made up of bronze to protect China's economy. Because the strings were often accepted without being checked for damaged coins and coins of inferior quality and copper alloys, these strings would eventually be accepted based on their nominal value rather than their weight; this system is comparable to that of a fiat currency. Because the counting and stringing together of cash coins was such a time-consuming task, people known as would string cash coins together in strings of 100 coins, of which ten would form a single. The would receive payment for their services in the form of taking a few cash coins from every string they composed. Because of this, a was more likely to consist of 990 coins rather than 1000 coins, and because the profession of had become a universally accepted practice, these were often still nominally valued at 1000 cash coins. The number of coins in a single string was locally determined, as in one district a string could consist of 980 cash coins, while in another district this could only be 965 cash coins. These numbers were based on the local salaries of the. During the Qing dynasty the would often search for older and rarer coins to sell these to coin collectors at a higher price.
The number of cash coins which had to be strung together to form a string differed due to region, time period, or by the materials used in the manufacture thereof. For example, under the reign of the Tự Đức Emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty, one string of cash coins included 600 zinc coins, while during the later days of the French colonial period, a string of cash coins was 500 copper alloy coins. In Vietnam a string of cash coins had the nominal value of 1 Mexican peso or 1 French Indochinese piastre. During the late 19th century in Qing China, some currency systems were named after how many cash coins made up a string, such as the or , which was an exchange rate that was used in the capital city of Beijing. The system allowed a nominal debt of 2 wén which could be paid out using only one physical cash coin instead of two. In this system a string of Beijing cash coins required only 500 cash coins as opposed to the majority of China, which used 1000 cash coins for a string. Meanwhile, in the system, an exchange rate used for cash coins in the Fengtian province, only 160 cash coins were needed to make up a string. During the Qing dynasty period, the term was used to designate long strings while the term was used to design short strings.
Although the term appeared frequently on banknotes, the only cash coin to have ever had the currency unit "String of cash coins" as a part of its inscription was the Nguyễn dynasty-era Tự Đức Bảo Sao 1 quán cash coin, which was worth 600 văn.
Background
Much like how cash coins are counted in , until the Qin dynasty, China used cowry shells and bronze cowry shells which were denominated in and a string of cowry shells was called a . However, it is currently not known how much was in a.Strings of cash coin units during the Qing dynasty
During the Qing dynasty different number of cash coins were used to make up strings of cash coins.- 1 = 1000 wén
- 1 metropolitan = 1000 metropolitan cash
- 1 metropolitan = 500 pieces of "standard cash coins"
- 1 metropolitan = 50 pieces of "big cash coins"
Silk as currency
was used as a commodity worth as much as gold. Silk started out as primarily produced by the Han Dynasty. While strings of cash coin were used as currency, it was not very valuable, only being worth its weight in the material it was made of. Silk was used to purchase many things but lost its value over time as middle eastern communities started producing their own silk and using it for trade. This over abundance of silk caused it to lose its worth. Strings of cash coins were mainly used for small purchases while silk was for larger trades.Banknotes
During the Song dynasty the first series of standard government Jiaozi notes were issued in 1024 with denominations like 1 , 1 , up to 10. In 1039 only banknotes of 5 and 10 were issued, and in 1068 a denomination of 1 was introduced which became forty percent of all circulating Jiaozi banknotes. The Huizi also continued to use these currency units. Between the years of 1161 and 1166 the government of the Song dynasty had produced 28,000,000 in Huizi notes. The exchange rate between Guanzi banknotes and copper cash coins was 1 for 770 wén while Huizi notes of the eighteenth production period were valued at 3 for 1. During the last days of the Southern Song dynasty, China was suffering from inflation to the point that the value of the Huizi had lowered so much that a was only accepted at between 300 and 400 cash coins, which caused people to start hoarding the coins, removing them from circulation which had a devastating effect on the economy. As the Mongols continued marching south, the Chinese military required more money causing the government to print an excessive amount of Huizi banknotes. The currency unit would later also be used by the Jurchen Jin dynasty and the Mongol Yuan dynasty on their Jiaochao banknotes, though due to hyperinflation these currencies would not be able to be exchanged with any real cash coins and under Mongol rule non-paper forms of currency were abolished.From the early fourteenth century to the early sixteenth century in Japan, banknotes which were known as saifu were used for transactions, payments, and the transfer of funds between remote regions. Most of these saifu banknotes had a value of 10 kanmon, these notes also circulated among the general public.
Under the Ming dynasty the Great Ming Treasure Note would also continue using as a currency unit for its denominations. The 1 Great Ming Treasure Note banknote was originally good for 1,000 copper-alloy cash coins and had a size of 36.4×22 cm, making it the largest Chinese paper banknote ever produced. In the middle of its design was an image of a string of cash coins to show what it was worth. At the bottom of the Great Ming Treasure Note banknote was text which explained that it was issued by the , that it was a valid type of currency used concurrently with copper-alloy cash coins, and that counterfeiters would face a penalty and those who notified the authorities of counterfeiting would be highly rewarded. Despite originally circulating concurrently with cash coins, the Great Ming Treasure Note became a fiat currency and would later no longer be able to be exchanged for any actual cash coins.
Privately produced banknotes of the Qing dynasty, as is usual for China, had a great variety of names designating them across the country with names being used such as Zhuangpiao, , , , , or . The denominations used on them varied greatly with some reaching as high as 5 .
During the early days of the Republic of China, the currency units of and were still being used on banknotes and. The Hupeh Provincial Bank, a provincial government-owned created by Zhang Zhidong, issued their own banknotes denominated both in taels and in , which were known as the , until 1927.
Bamboo tallies
Some Chinese bamboo tallies, which circulated in the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shandong from the 1870s until the 1940s, used "strings of cash coins" as a currency unit, but also contained additional inscriptions stating that they would not be paid out in "regular" cash coins. For example, a bamboo tally with the text "串錢壹仟文" could contain the additional information that it if were to be redeemed, it would be paid out in of "10 cash" coins. This bamboo tally would then be paid out in a string of 100 of 10.Below their denominations many bamboo tallies had the Chinese characters to indicate that the bamboo tally is trustworthy to be worth its stated value.
Another way to indicate what type of cash coins would be paid out is if the bamboo tally did or did not contain the inscription 10 below its top hole. It could then contain an inscription like "串錢貳百文" that would only have to be paid out in a string of 20 cash coins of 10 rather than 200 cash coins of 1. The issuing authorities would do this due to the concept of "token" money that the Chinese employed at the time. As the Qing dynasty's government started manufacturing Daqian since the Xianfeng period that contained high nominal values but had intrinsic values that were only slightly more valuable than the low denomination coinages, the issuer of the bamboo tally would be able to make a profit off of this situation. This was because the bamboo tally in question would be valued more than the promised redeemed value.
In general, bamboo tallies in the region were not always redeemed and would continue to circulate in their local areas as a type of alternative currency as long as the local populace would maintain their trust that the bamboo token had value or worth. This situation translated to the profits of issuing the tally being kept by the issuing authority. And if the bamboo tally were to be redeemed, the redeemer would receive a weight of bronze or brass much lower than the bamboo tally's nominal value.