China has had small money in past dynasties. Small money is sometimes called "bad money", which is a manifestation of currency depreciation. For example, the elm pod in the Western Han Dynasty, a corn-eyed five baht and Dong Zhuo's worthless money are all very small, but the lightest and smallest coin is the goose-eyed money cast in the first year of Liu Songjing in the Southern and Northern Dynasties (465). This kind of money is "a thousand dollars is not three inches long, it is not submerged, it is easy to break, and hundreds of thousands of dollars are not earned." Because it is too light and too small to be preserved, 1500 years later, it is difficult to see its real object.
China minted the earliest silver coins with characters.
During the Guangxu period in the late Qing Dynasty, the British and Indian rupees flowed into Tibet in large quantities and penetrated into Sichuan, Yunnan and other places, which seriously damaged the economy of the southwest frontier. In order to resist Indian Rupee's invasion, in the thirty-second year of Guangxu (1906), the Qing government decided to officially cast the Sichuan rupee by the Sichuan Banking Bureau. There are three kinds of flowers: one rupee, half rupee and quarter rupee. The central flowers are divided into straight flowers and horizontal flowers, and the horizontal flowers are less. There is a bust of Queen Victoria of England on the front of Indian Rupee, and a bust of Emperor Guangxu on the front of Sichuan Rupee. This is the earliest person in China who minted silver coins, and it is also the only official currency minted by the emperor.
The earliest official silver coin in circulation in China.
China began to use money very early, but before the Qing Dynasty, it was only used as a reward and storage, not as an informal currency. The official silver coins in circulation in China should be the treasures of the Qianlong period (1792). There are three kinds of silver coins, the largest one weighs one yuan and fifty cents, the middle one weighs one yuan and the small one weighs fifty cents, and the middle one is the most minted one, which is only used in Tibet. Coins are made by hand, and the money body is very thin, commonly known as "thin slices". The front of the money is the Chinese character "Qianlong Treasure", and the back is Xixia, which also means "Qianlong Treasure". There is a box in the center of the coin, which symbolizes the square hole, but it is not penetrated. There are three kinds of years in the margin, which are 58 years, 59 years and 60 years respectively.
China's earliest machine for casting silver coins.
Silver coins in China have a long history of casting, but both are cast and hand-made. /kloc-in the 9th century, the machine industry developed vigorously all over the world, and machine coinage appeared one after another. The original coinage technology in China was very backward. In the tenth year of Guangxu in Qing Dynasty (1884), the advanced craft "Jilin Changping" silver coin was born. Produced by Jilin Machinery Bureau, it is the earliest machine-cast silver coin in China.
There are five sets of "Jilin Changping" silver coins, which are divided into one coin, San Qian, half two, seven coins and one or two or five denominations. In the center of the front, there are two Chinese characters, "Made by Jilin Machinery Bureau in Guangxu Ten Years" 12. There are dragons on both sides of the characters, and there is a seal character "Shou" at the top, which constitutes the longevity offering pattern of the two dragons. The central box on the back is the Pingji value of the Chinese language factory, and the outer circle is the corresponding Manchu language with moire. This kind of silver coin was presented to the Qing court when it was cast, but it was not approved, so it was not issued, and only a small amount was scattered among the people, so it was very precious.
The earliest Yang Long in China.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty, many provinces in China successively minted machine-made silver coins, some of which had dragons on the back, commonly known as "Yang Long". The earliest Yang Long in China was Yang Long, Guangdong Province, initiated by Zhang Zhidong.
In the 13th year of Guangxu (1887), Zhang Zhidong, governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, saw that foreign silver coins flowed into China in large quantities, flooding the market and disrupting the economy, so he called on the imperial court to make silver coins for resistance. In the 15th year of Guangxu reign (1889), the Qing government approved the trial casting of silver coins by Guangdong Yuan Yin Bureau. This kind of silver coin has the words "Guangxu Yuanbao" on the front, four characters in the middle, which are also "Guangxu Yuanbao", and the English words "Guangdong Province" and "Seven Money and Three Points" on the outer bead, with a dragon pattern on the back and the words "Made in Guangdong Province" on the top and bottom. In addition, there are four denominations in San Qian, namely, six cents and five cents, one cents and six cents and five cents, which are called "seven-three model boards" by the coin industry and later changed to "seven-two model boards". This is the earliest dragon silver coin cast in China. After the sample coins were sent to Beijing, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development ordered the English on the front to be moved to the back and the Chinese on the back to the front, which became the Yang Long widely circulated in Guangdong.