Copper cash

The cash or qian was a type of coin of China and East Asia, used from the 4th century BC until the 20th century AD, characterised by their round outer shape and a square center hole (方穿, ''fāng chuān''). Originally cast during the Warring States period, these coins continued to be used for the entirety of Imperial China. The last Chinese cash coins were cast in the first year of the Republic of China. Generally most cash coins were made from copper or bronze alloys, with iron, lead, and zinc coins occasionally used less often throughout Chinese history. Rare silver and gold cash coins were also produced. During most of their production, cash coins were cast, but during the late Qing dynasty, machine-struck cash coins began to be made. As the cash coins produced over Chinese history were similar, thousand year old cash coins produced during the Northern Song dynasty continued to circulate as valid currency well into the early twentieth century.

In the modern era, these coins are considered to be Chinese “good luck coins”; they are hung on strings and round the necks of children, or over the beds of sick people. They hold a place in various traditional Chinese techniques, such as Yijing divination, as well as Traditional Chinese medicine, and Feng shui. Currencies based on the Chinese cash coins include the Japanese mon, Korean mun, Ryukyuan mon, and Vietnamese văn.

Terminology

The English term ''cash'', referring to the coin, comes from the Portuguese ''caixa'' which was derived from the Tamil ''kāsu,'' a South Indian monetary unit derived from the Sanskrit silver and gold weight unit ''karsa''. The English name was used for small copper coins issued in British India, and also came to be used for the similarly small value copper coins of China.

The English word ''cash'' meaning "tangible currency" is an older, unrelated word, derived from the Middle French ''caisse''.

There are a variety of Chinese terms for cash coins, usually descriptive and most commonly including the character ''qián'' () meaning "money". Chinese ''qián'' is also a weight-derived currency denomination in China; it is called '' mace'' in English.

Manufacture

Traditionally, Chinese cash coins were cast in copper, brass or iron. In the mid-19th century, the coins were made of 3 parts copper and 2 parts lead.Roberts, Edmund. (1837) ''Embassy to the Eastern Courts of Cochin-China, Siam, and Muscat: In the U.S. Sloop-of-war Peacock'', Harper & Brothers. Harvard University archive. No ISBN Digitized. Cast silver coins were periodically produced but considerably more rare. Cast gold coins are also known to exist but are extremely rare.

Early methods of casting

During the Zhou dynasty period, the method for casting coins consisted of first carving the individual characters of a coin together with its general outline into a mould made of either soapstone or clay. As this was done without using a prior model, early Chinese coinage tends to look very diverse, even from the same series of coins as these all were cast from different (and unrelated) moulds bearing the same inscriptions.

During the Han dynasty, in order to gain consistency in the circulating coinage, master bronze moulds were manufactured to be used as the basis for other cash moulds.

Later methods of manufacture

From the 6th century AD and later, new "mother coins" (''mǔ qián'' ) were cast as the basis for coin production. These were engraved in generally easily manipulated metals such as tin. Coins were cast in sand moulds. Fine wet sand was placed in rectangles made from pear wood, and small amounts of coal and charcoal dust were added to refine the process, acting as a flux. The mother coins were placed on the sand, and another pear wood frame would be placed upon the mother coin. The molten metal was poured in through a separate entrance formed by placing a rod in the mould. This process would be repeated 15 times and then molten metal would be poured in. After the metal had cooled down, the "coin tree" (''qián shù'' ) was extracted from the mould (which would be destroyed due to the process). The coins would be taken off the tree and placed on long square rods to have their edges rounded off, often for hundreds of coins simultaneously. After this process, the coins were strung together and brought into circulation.

In Korea cash coins are known as ''yeopjeon'' (葉錢, "leaf coins") because of the way that they resemble leaves on a branch when they were being cast in the mould.

From 1730 during the Qing dynasty, the mother coins were no longer carved separately but derived from "ancestor coins" (''zǔ qián'' ). Eventually this resulted in greater uniformity among cast Chinese coinage from that period onwards. A single ancestor coin would be used to produce tens of thousands of mother coins; each of these in turn was used to manufacture tens of thousands of cash coins.

Machine-struck coinage

During the late Qing dynasty under the reign of the Guangxu Emperor in the mid 19th century the first machine-struck cash coins were produced, from 1889 a machine operated mint in Guangzhou, Guangdong province opened where the majority of the machine-struck cash would be produced. Machine-made cash coins tend to be made from brass rather than from more pure copper as cast coins often were, and later the copper content of the alloy decreased while cheaper metals like lead and tin were used in larger quantities giving the coins a yellowish tint. Another effect of the contemporary copper shortages was that the Qing government started importing Korean 5 fun coins and overstruck them with "10 cash".

The production of machine-struck cash coins in Qing China ran contemporary with the production of machine-struck French Indochinese Nguyễn cash coins, but unlike in China milled cash coinage would eventually become popular in French Indochina with the Khải Định Thông Bảo (啓定通寶).

History

Ancient China

Chinese cash coins originated from the barter of farming tools and agricultural surpluses. Around 1200 BC, smaller token spades, hoes, and knives began to be used to conduct smaller exchanges with the tokens later melted down to produce real farm implements. These tokens came to be used as media of exchange themselves and were known as spade money and knife money.Fredrik Schöth. ''Chinese Currency''. Revised and edited by Virgil Hancock. Iola, WI, USA: Krause, 1965.

Imperial China

As standard circular coins were developed following the unification of China by Qin Shi Huang, the most common formation was the round-shaped copper coin with a square or circular hole in the center, the prototypical cash. The early Ban Liang cash coins were said to have been made in the shape of wheels like how other Ancient Chinese forms of coinage were based on agricultural tools. It is commonly believed that the early round coins of the Warring States period resembled the ancient jade circles (璧環) which symbolised the supposed round shape of the sky, while the centre hole in this analogy is said to represent the planet earth (天圓地方). The body of these early round coins was called their "flesh" (肉) and the central hole was known as "the good" (好).

The hole enabled the coins to be strung together to create higher denominations, as was frequently done due to the coin's low value. The number of coins in a ''string of cash'' () varied over time and place but was nominally 1000. A tael