chinese ancient coin money

the information on these pages is intended to give the reader a basic overview of major chinese coin types like knives, spades and round coins, as well as the most basic circumstances of the coinage of each dynasty. since the information has to cover a large area, it is somewhat superficial, but i give references to more specialized literature where the subject can be studied deeper (see the literature page). i had studied some chinese when i started to collect chinese coins, but i still sometimes had trouble identifying coins. i have included some tools i have found useful myself, and hope it will be of help to beginners.

a page about coins will necessarily have to include many pictures, and it will take a while to load some of the pages on a slow connection, but i hope your patience will be rewarded.

the title "chinese coins" refers here mainly to cast coins of bronze, iron and lead.

all images of coins are from my own collection.

dynasties: chinas history is divided in dynasties, not in the years of the christian calendar, and all coins on this site can be accessed from the list of dynasties on the coins page.

china has been unified in most periods, but in some periods it has been divided into minor kingdoms. every dynasty or kingdom that issued coins are important to the numismatist, and a detailed list can be found on the dynasties page.

chinese copper coinage remained practically unchanged from the tang dynasty (a.d. 618-907) up until the first years of chinese republic that was founded in 1911. even the first round coins cast in the period from the end of the zhou dynasty (b.c. 1045-221) up to the tang dynasty were not much different. the old copper coinage was so alike that 1000 year old coins from the northern song dynasty (960-1127), still circulated in china as valid currency at the beginning of the twentieth century