Mace (unit)
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A mace (;
Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
English usage: tsin;
Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainlan ...
n English usage: chee) is a traditional Chinese measurement of weight in
East Asia East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both Geography, geographical and culture, ethno-cultural terms. The modern State (polity), states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. ...
that was also used as a currency denomination. It is equal to 10
candareen A candareen (; Accessed from OED Online. ; Singapore English usage: hoon) is a traditional measurement of weight in East Asia. It is equal to 10 cash and is of a mace. It is approximately 378 milligrams. A troy candareen is approximately ...
s and is of a
tael Tael (),"Tael" entry
at the ...
or approximately 3.78
gram The gram (originally gramme; SI unit symbol g) is a unit of mass in the International System of Units (SI) equal to one one thousandth of a kilogram. Originally defined as of 1795 as "the absolute weight of a volume of pure water equal to th ...
s. A
troy Troy ( el, Τροία and Latin: Troia, Hittite: 𒋫𒊒𒄿𒊭 ''Truwiša'') or Ilion ( el, Ίλιον and Latin: Ilium, Hittite: 𒃾𒇻𒊭 ''Wiluša'') was an ancient city located at Hisarlik in present-day Turkey, south-west of Ç ...
mace is approximately 3.7429 grams. In
Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
, one mace is 3.779936375
gram The gram (originally gramme; SI unit symbol g) is a unit of mass in the International System of Units (SI) equal to one one thousandth of a kilogram. Originally defined as of 1795 as "the absolute weight of a volume of pure water equal to th ...
s. and in Ordinance 22 of 1884, it is
ounce The ounce () is any of several different units of mass, weight or volume and is derived almost unchanged from the , an Ancient Roman unit of measurement. The avoirdupois ounce (exactly ) is avoirdupois pound; this is the United States customa ...
s avoirdupois. In Singapore, one mace (referred to as chee) is 3.77994 grams. In imperial
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, 10
candareen A candareen (; Accessed from OED Online. ; Singapore English usage: hoon) is a traditional measurement of weight in East Asia. It is equal to 10 cash and is of a mace. It is approximately 378 milligrams. A troy candareen is approximately ...
s equaled 1 mace which was of a
tael Tael (),"Tael" entry
at the ...
and, like the other units, was used in weight-denominated silver currency system. A common denomination was 7 mace and 2 candareens, equal to one silver
Chinese yuan The renminbi (; symbol: ¥; ISO code: CNY; abbreviation: RMB) is the official currency of the People's Republic of China and one of the world's most traded currencies, ranking as the fifth most traded currency in the world as of April 2022. ...
.


Name

Like other similar measures such as tael and
catty The catty, kati or , pronounced as jin in Mandarin and gan in Cantonese, is a traditional Chinese unit of mass used across East and Southeast Asia, notably for weighing food and other groceries in some wet markets, street markets, and shops ...
, the English word "mace" derives from
Malay Malay may refer to: Languages * Malay language or Bahasa Melayu, a major Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore ** History of the Malay language, the Malay language from the 4th to the 14th century ** Indonesi ...
, in this case through
Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...
''maes'', plural ''masen'', from Malay ''mas'' which, in turn, derived from
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
', a word related to "mash," another name for the
urad bean ''Vigna mungo'', also known as black gram, urad bean, urid bean, mash kalai, uzhunnu parippu, ulundu paruppu, minapa pappu, uddu, or black matpe, is a bean grown in South Asia. Like its relative, the mung bean, it has been reclassified from the ...
, and
masha In Russian, Masha () is a diminutive of Maria. It has been used as a nickname or as a pet name for women named Maria or Marie. An alternative spelling in the Latin alphabet is "Macha". In Serbo-Croatian and Slovene, "Maša" is a diminutive of "Mar ...
, a traditional Indian unit of weight equal to 0.97 gram. This word is unrelated to other uses of mace in English. The Chinese word for mace is ''qian'' (), which is also a generic word for "money" in
Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language ...
. (The same
Chinese character Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanj ...
(
kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...
) was used for the
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
ese ''sen'', the former unit equal to of a Japanese yen; the
Korea Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...
n ''chŏn'' ( revised: jeon), the former unit equal to of a
Korean won The Korean won ( ko, 원 (圓), ) or Korean Empire won ( Korean: 대한제국 원), was the official currency of the Korean Empire between 1902 and 1910. It was subdivided into 100 ''jeon'' (; ko, 전 (錢), ). Etymology Won is a ...
; and for the
Vietnamese tiền Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia ** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam. * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overse ...
, a currency used in late
imperial Vietnam The Empire of Vietnam (; Literary Chinese and Contemporary Japanese: ; Modern Japanese: ja, ベトナム帝国, Betonamu Teikoku, label=none) was a short-lived puppet state of Imperial Japan governing the former French protectorates of Annam ...
; although neither of these has ever been known as "mace" in English.)


See also

*
Chinese units of measurement Chinese units of measurement, known in Chinese as the ''shìzhì'' ("market system"), are the traditional units of measurement of the Han Chinese. Although Chinese numerals have been decimal (base-10) since the Shang, several Chinese measures us ...
*
Economic history of China (Pre-1911) The economic history of China covers thousands of years and the region has undergone alternating cycles of prosperity and decline. China, for the last two millennia, was one of the world's largest and most advanced economies. Economic historians ...
*
Economic history of China (1912–1949) After the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912, China underwent a period of instability and disrupted economic activity. During the Nanjing decade (1927–1937), China advanced in a number of industrial sectors, in particular those related to the m ...
* Economy of China *
Hong Kong units of measurement Hong Kong has three main systems of units of measurement in current use: * The Chinese units of measurement of the Qing Empire (no longer in widespread use in mainland China); * British Imperial units; and * The metric system. In 1976 the Hong ...
*
Taiwanese units of measurement Taiwanese units of measurement ( Chinese: , Taiwanese Hokkien: Tâi-chè, Hakka: Thòi-chṳ, Mandarin: Táizhì) are the customary and traditional units of measure used in Taiwan. The Taiwanese units formed in the 1900s when Taiwan was under Ja ...


References

Currencies of China Currencies of Asia Modern obsolete currencies Chinese units in Hong Kong Units of mass {{standard-stub