Getting Started with Chinese Numismatics

[mmarotta]

CHINA CALLING: Getting started with East Asian numismatics
by Mike Marotta (MSNS 7935)
(This article originally appeared in the Winter 2007 issue of the MSNS Mich-Matist.  With MSNS, after first publication, rights revert to the author.)

Monetary and intellectual profits await the collector who makes the effort to understand Chinese numismatics.  The effort is unavoidable.  China seems strange because it is. 

Western culture is a pluralistic blending of competing peoples and their traditions, Babylonian, Greek, Jewish, and Celtic among many others.  Our literary heritage includes not only the Iliad and Odyssey, but also works in hieroglyphics (The Book of the Dead) and cuneiform (Gilgamesh) – none of which is obviously related to our modern languages or alphabets.  China is the opposite of all this. 

The oldest written Chinese records (oracle bones from the Neolithic Shang c. 1000 BC) are very similar to the modern language.  One people and their culture – the Han – have dominated for so long that even after 250 years, the ruling Qing dynasty (1644-1911), was resisted by Chinese who called them “foreigners” for having originated in Manchuria, rather than central China.  Toughest of all, perhaps, Chinese writing is based on ideographs, even when those characters are used as sounds, rather than ideas. 

The upside is that once you begin tugging at the strings, the knot of Chinese numismatics unravels and the entire package opens up.  From there, it is up to you to decide what to pursue and how deeply to become involved.  The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the time of the Warring States, the true story of Mulan or the fantastic claims of Marco Polo, the Silk Route and the Opium Wars, all of that and more await the collector with a passion for history.  It does not take much to find out about Mao Zedong, but you have to dig a little deeper to discover the Tallyrand of Chinese politics, Yuan Shikai, whose silver dollars are the most common of all Chinese crowns.  Among the well-known Yuan Shikai (“YSK”) fakes may be half a million struck in the U.S.S.R. to ransom Comintern agent Mikhail Borodin.

The challenge is in knowing the real fakes from the fake fakes.  In most times and places the penalty for counterfeiting has been death, but the Chinese invented death by a thousand cuts, the water torture and strangulation that takes all day.  Even so, counterfeiters were not deterred, in ancient times or modern.  Today, the penalties are not so harsh.  Though the People’s Republic recently beheaded several forgers of U.S. currency as a result of information provided by the U.S. Treasury Department, you would not know it if you shop for Seated Dollars on eBay. 

For these reasons and more, studying Chinese numismatics means following the age-old advice from Aaron Feldman: “Buy the book before you buy the coin.”   Fred Knust (“First Light Numismatics” of Mason, Michigan) grew up in Japan.  Fred earned a bachelor’s degree in Far Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan.  He recommends the new standard catalog, Cast Chinese Coins by David Hartill, published in 2005.  The Royal Numismatic Society granted this book their Lhotka award in July 2006.  In the words of the RNS this is “the first useable reference listing of traditional Chinese coins to be published in English since Frederick Schjoth’s volume in 1929. The Lhotka Prize is given to the book in English most useful for the novice numismatist and David’s manual provides everything a novice student or collector could need on Chinese coins.”

The work by ”Schjoth” is Fredrik Schjöth’s Chinese Currency.  Updated editions have been published, for instance by Krause.  One of the features of the new Hartill work is that it provides a concordance to Schjöth numbers, which is what most dealers and collectors use when discussing coins.  The other traditional work is “Fisher’s Ding.”  George Fisher westernized the classic A Catalog of Ancient Chinese Coins by Ting Fu-Pao, first published in Shanghai in 1936.  Fisher’s Ding was last republished by the author in 1990 and, like Schjöth, it is widely available from retailers as well as from antiquarians in numismatic literature. 

That the Chinese historian, Ting Fu-pao (1874-1952), is also known as Ding Fubao reflects another challenge.  Chinese is a tonal language and we have no easy way to show those different sounds with our alphabet.  Also, four different major efforts by Russian, French, British and Chinese linguists have given us two “standard” ways to Romanize Chinese: “Wade-Giles” and pinyin.  Wade-Giles is the traditional English system, still used in France.  Pinyin is the modern Chinese system.  Hanyu Pinyin is the official ISO system, but Wade-Giles has a lot of inertia.  The communist leader known to older Americans as Mao tse-Tung is now (officially) Mao Zadong.  However, his mirror image adversary, Jiang Jieshi, is still better known as Chiang kai-Shek.  The Chinese themselves have dealt with this for thousands of years.  If you go to a Chinese movie, you will see Chinese subtitles because the language is not spoken the same everywhere.  It is written the same everywhere.  That is the strength and beauty of an ideographic system.

Fortunately, you do not have to learn all of this at once. 

The coins of the Southern Sung dynasty (AD 1127-1279) are available and affordable.  This was a time when the Chinese court retreated before barbarian invasions.  The imperial dynasty consolidated in a new capital in Hangzhou.  Weakened by its losses and in disarray, the government was largely ineffective.  Naturally enough, this led to a flowering of the arts and an increase in trade and commerce.  It is from this period that the Ode to Mulan was given its standard form.  It is also the time of a re-awakening in Europe.  Marco Polo visited those northern barbarians, the Kitai, from whom we came to call China “Cathay.”  There were nine Southern Sung emperors, making a representative cash set achievable.  On the other hand, one of them, Lizong, took eight different “reign names” so pursuing a complete set of Lizong opens another avenue. 
   
Coins are usually the most common artifact of any time and place.  In its 3,000 year history, China has the invention of noodles, gunpowder, printing, paper money, and galleons that crossed open oceans.  The ink on the Magna Carta was still wet in 1215 when a Chinese woman named Yang Miao Zhen governed a province. 

Getting Started
Learn Chinese Characters
http://zhongwen.com/
This website is a personal project created and maintained by  Dr. Richmond Harbaugh, assistant professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the
Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. 
http://www.usc.edu/dept/ealc/chinese/newweb/character_page.html
These pages are from the University of Southern California department of Chinese in the East Asian Language Center. 

About China

• http://www.chinapage.com
  Created by Dr. Ming L. Pei with help from half a dozen editors and writers in several countries, the site has been up for over a decade.  You will find links to all aspects of Chinese culture, language, history, arts, etc.
  China: a New History by John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman. 
  Available at any book retailer for $19.95, this standard history from Harvard University is authoritative and readable, presented thematically in compelling, modern language.  The late Dr. Fairbank was always recognized as one of America’s best sinologists.
  The Soong Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave. 
  One daughter loved money; one daughter loved power; and one daughter loved China.  This is the story of the family who not only ruled China in the 20th century but who shaped U.S. foreign policy and world opinion to do it.  Soong Ai Ling inherited her father’s commercial empire and married H. H. Kung whose signature is known to collectors of Chinese banknotes.  Soong Mei Ling married Chiang kai-Shek.  Soong Qing Ling married Sun Yat-sen.  The three brothers were less famous, but no less wealthy and powerful.[/font][/size]

[coinsarefun]

Very nice article and great reading.
We have here posted under Wold coins, written by a member showing his coins
of Hong Kong, which others may find interesting. http://www.coinsarefun.com/silvercoinshongkong.html

I have his copper coins article and coin images but have not had time to post it, but should get to it soon

[mmarotta]

In order ... 
Emperor Wang Ming (14-22 AD)  Schjöth 120
(Left right) Ta-ch’üan
(Top Bottom) wu-shih
uniface

Emperor Sheng Tsu (1662-1722) Schjöth 1425, 1436, etc. (2.55 grams)
(left-right) k'ang shi
(top-bottom) tung pao
uniface

Ta Ching Kwang-Hsü (1875-1908); Schjöth 1587
obverse and reverse

Chi-Lhi China 1908; Dollar;
Y-73.2 (26.39 grams)
and
Y73.2 (short center spine to tail) (26.68 grams)