Kauris were used for paying for goods, workmen and soldiers. The Kauri shells were pierced and threaded onto strings. The Kauri shell, known as “bei”, is an import from the coastal regions of the eastern and southern Chinese Sea and is considered to be the first prominent means of payment in Ancient China. The inscriptions on these bronze plates tell us that China was ruled by dynasties of kings: by the Shang dynasty from 1600 B.C., and the Zhou dynasty from 1100 B.C.īack then, bartering was a common way of doing business. In those ancient times, this whole area was inhabited by peasants and warriors. On its Great Plain the origins of Chinese culture emerged, and this was also where the great history of Chinese money originated. One of these rivers is the Huanghe, the Yellow River. It is, therefore, no wonder that Chinese mythology tells of rulers turning the soil into farmland and regulating the rivers. The commentaries by Dagmar Lorenz, sinologist and author of the DVD, complete the small tour d'horizon.Ĭhina – thousands of years of civilization.Īncient China lived on agriculture: the country’s crops were vital to its affluence and stability. This and other kinds of money from the Middle Kingdom are presented here in their historical context. And yet the history of its money has been characterised by its unique stability – cowry currency and the cash coin, for example, were in circulation for many centuries. The same can be said of China's money: in the course of its long development from a small cultural island on the Yellow River to the People's Republic, the Land of the Dragon has witnessed many forms of money come and go. States come and go," Luo Guanzhong wrote in his novel The Three Kingdoms.
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