User:Donald Trung/Privately produced silver coinage of the Manchu Qing Dynasty

Target: Qing dynasty coinage.  Published. --Donald Trung (talk) 19:24, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Private production of silver coinage

An illustration of various weights of privately produced silver sycees.

Despite silver making up the other half of the bimetallic system of the Qing dynasty's coinage it wasn’t officially produced by the government until the later period of the dynasty where the silver coins would be based on the foreign coins that already circulated in China. Government ledgers used it as a unit of account, in particular the Kuping Tael (庫平兩) was used for this. For most of its history both the production and the measurements of silver was in the hands of the private market which handled the exclusive production of silver currency, the greatest amount of silver ingots in China was produced by private silversmiths (銀樓) in professional furnaces (銀爐), only a very small amount of silver ingots was issued by government-owned banks during the late 19th century. While assayers and moneychangers had control over its exchange rates, for this reason no unified system of silver currency in place in China but a series of different types of silver ingots that were used in various markets throughout the country. The most common form of silver ingots (元寶 or 寶銀) in China were the "horse-hoof ingots" (馬蹄銀) and could weigh as much as fifty taels, there were also "middle-size ingots" (中錠) which usually weigh around 10 taels, "small-size ingots" (小錠) that weighed between one and five taels, and "silver crumbs" (碎銀 or 銀子). All freshly cast ingots were sent to official assayers (公估局) where their weight and fineness were marked with a brush. However these determinations were only valid on the local market and nowhere else do silver ingots were constantly reassessed which was the daily business of Chinese money changers. In fact, silver ingots were weighed in each single transaction.

Silver ingots were traded at different rates that were dependent on the purity of their silver content, the average ones were known as Wenyin (紋銀) or Zubao (足寶) which had (theoretical) purity of .935374, meanwhile specimens that were of higher quality and content were referred to by true surplus that was to be advanced on changing. Exempli gratia a silver ingot known as an "Er-Si Bao" (二四寶) with a weight of fifty taels was valued at 52.4 taels. Likewise other silver standards in China were all geared to the Wenyin such as the Shanghai tael that used in the foreign concession of the city, for instance, was called the Jiuba Guiyuan (九八規元) because it had 98 per cent of the purity of the Shanghai standard tael (規元). The standard tael of Tianjin was called the Xinghua (行化) and that of Hankou was known as the Yangli (洋例).

Names of weights and standards of Chinese silver ingots

The most commonly used English term to describe Chinese silver ingots is "sycee" (細絲), which comes from a Cantonese term meaning "fine weight" where the "weight" (絲, sī) represents 0.00001 tael. However a large number of regional terms and names for these silver ingots existed throughout China, these names include:

Name	Traditional Chinese	Simplified Chinese	Region	Image of a regionally produced sycee
Yuansi	元絲	元丝	Southern Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
Yanche	鹽撤	盐撤	Jiangxi, Hubei, and Hunan.
Xicao Shuisi	西鏪水絲	西鏪水丝	Shandong.
Tucao	土鏪	土鏪	Sichuan.
Liucao	柳鏪	柳鏪	Sichuan.
Huixiang	茴香	茴香	Sichuan.
Yuancao	元鏪	元鏪	Shaanxi and Gansu.
Beiliu	北流	北流	Guangxi.
Shicao	石鏪	石鏪	Yunnan.
Chahua	茶花	茶花	Yunnan.

Among the aforementioned regional names other designations for sycees were Qingsi (青絲), Baisi (白絲), Danqing (單傾), Shuangqing (雙傾), Fangcao (方鏪), and Changcao (長鏪) among many others.

Aside from the large number of names for sycees that existed in China there was also a wealth of different weight standards for taels that existed that were different from market to market. One of the larger variants of the tael was the Kuping Tael (庫平兩) which was used by the Chinese Ministry of Revenue for both weight measurements as well as a unit of account used during tax collections. In 1858 a new trade tax was introduced which used the Sea Customs tael (海關兩) as a unit of account, meanwhile in Guangdong the Canton Tael (廣平兩) was used when trading with foreign merchants. Another unit of account that was used was the Grain Tribute Tael (漕平兩) which was used for measuring and accounting the tribute the imperial Chinese government received in grain.

Standard reference template

• {{sfn|Peng (彭) - 1954 (2007)|p=575–577}}

Related projects

• User:Donald Trung/Foreign silver coins and their nicknames.

• User:Donald Trung/Foreign silver "Dollars" in the Manchu Qing Dynasty.