Ancient money: Shells, shovels, knives

Fascinating short film and exhibits on ancient currencies used in China. Apparently it all started with strings of seashells, hence the large number of money/ value-related words that contain the bei贝 radical - learn something new every day! The next evolution was to shovels, knives and coins. All three were used in various regions of what is today China, until one emperor decreed that everyone would use the coins. Glad that he did not choose the knives or shovels!

The round periphery of the coin is supposed to represent the Heavens and the inner square hole, the imperial palace/ treasury/ power. We got a few shots of some amazingly detailed coins and a special dragon coin for Meg. The film also taught us about different methods of casting moulds for pouring in molten copper to make money trees, stacked money trees and then coin foundries.

Two more recent bills from the early 1900s that were interesting for us as well were an old HSBC note and one from the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank (apparently based in Beijing) that actually has mostly German text on it. Czytaj więcej