Chapter 88

After comparing a lot of information, Ye Yuan learned that these silver ingots were all standard fifty-tael official silver. 520 official website

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The fifty taels here are not the same as fifty taels today; there is a significant difference in weight between ancient and modern times.

The ancient unit of weight "tael" is completely different from the modern "tael."

It is not equal to 50 grams today.

Similarly, the ancient "jin" (pound) is completely different from the modern "jin," and it does not equal 500 grams.

The ancient "tael" was not a very strict standard unit, and it varied across different dynasties.

Even within the same period, there were different standards such as "Fuping" and "Kuping," with slight differences between them.

If we take the most commonly used standard and compare it with modern weight units:

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, "Kuping one tael" was approximately equal to 37.31 grams.

One "jin" equals 16 "taels," which is about 597 grams.

As for the "jin" (500 grams) we use today, it was redefined after the founding of the People's Republic of China to facilitate conversion with kilograms, and it has no relation to the ancient "jin."

Regarding the issue of indemnities at the end of the Qing Dynasty, it cannot be compared to the thousands of tons of silver today.

Currently, countries around the world use gold as hard currency, while silver is mainly used for industrial, decorative, and other purposes, and its actual market price has significantly decreased.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, silver was the hard currency for international trade for many countries, and due to the lower total amount and annual production compared to today, its actual purchasing power was much higher.

While looking for this information, Ye Yuan also found an interesting fact about how people in ancient times gave change.

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the silver standard system was used, with "tael" as the main unit.

Units below the tael, such as "qian," "fen," "li," and "hao," were still relatively common.

Units like "si," "hu," "wei," "xian," "sha," "chen," "ai," "miao," "mo," and "mo" were rarely used in daily life.

These ten Chinese characters, used as units of measurement, all mean "minute" or "tiny."

There are compound words in Chinese, such as "siwei," "weixian," "weimo," "haoli," "siao," and "chenai."

The fifteen units below the tael are all decimal.

Ten "si" equal one "hao," ten "hu" equal one "si," ten "sha" equal one "xian," ten "chen" equal one "sha," and so on.

Using real silver was very inconvenient, as it did not have a fixed denomination and had to be weighed using a special scale (dengzi).

The "dengzi" is a relatively precise scale, with the largest unit being the tael, and smaller units being "fen" or "li."

Besides silver, it was also used to weigh valuable herbs, spices, and pigments.

Therefore, only high-ranking officials and nobles had dengzi, which were often made of ebony or ivory.

There were also fixed-weight silver ingots. During the Yuan Dynasty, a type of 50-tael ingot called "yuanbao" (treasure of the Yuan Dynasty) was cast.

Later, this name was adopted. The shape of the yuanbao was curved at both ends to facilitate carrying it around the waist, which is where the phrase "waichuan wanguan" (waist wrapped with ten thousand strings) comes from.

There were also smaller ingots, such as 25-tael and 10-tael ingots, and even smaller silver pieces.

For small purchases, loose silver was used. Silver is relatively soft and can be cut with scissors and weighed with a dengzi.

The quality of silver also varied. The best quality silver was called "wenyin" (patterned silver) because of its wrinkled surface. Lower quality silver was called "dixin" (low silver).

In normal commercial transactions, copper coins were used. Small coins were half a tael, large coins were five zhu, and 120 coins made up one guan. In most cases, this was sufficient.

Large commercial trades used silver. For large transactions, silver was traded at money shops, and professional money handlers would verify the silver.

For loose silver, if used outside of money shops, it was typically verified by biting to check the quality and weighing by hand to check the weight. The purchasing power of silver varied: during the Tang Dynasty, one tael of silver could buy 3500 copper coins; during the Song Dynasty, it could buy 3000 copper coins; and during the Ming Dynasty, it could buy about 2500 copper coins.

Many period dramas show people paying with a large silver ingot at a small restaurant, which is purely fictional.

In ancient times, people generally used copper coins. If the cost was high, they would use silver, but carrying a large ingot was inconvenient and could easily be damaged, resulting in the loss of several days' worth of food.

So, what would they do? They would carry loose silver. But how did they get loose silver?

The method was to cut a large ingot into smaller pieces.

Many people would directly break a large ingot or cut off a small corner.

For small markets or stalls, transactions were typically made with copper coins, as it was difficult to give change with silver unless the customer did not care about the change.

However, if the customer went to a place where silver was used, such as a high-end teahouse or restaurant, the shop would have a scale.

The quality of circulating loose silver varied, so merchants had to convert it to a standard quality. Some experienced merchants could estimate the weight of loose silver by feel, which shows how skilled they were.

In practice, the quality of circulating loose silver varied, and it had to be converted to a standard quality. If the customer did not trust the shop, they could seek the services of a public appraisal agency to evaluate the silver.

If an ancient merchant left their hometown A to trade in a distant place B, the silver ingots they brought from A were considered "illegal" in B. The merchant had three options to use the silver from A:

One option was to find a local silver shop or furnace in B, which would recast the silver according to local standards, but this would incur additional costs and increased expenses.

Another option was to exchange the silver at the A merchant's guild in B, converting the silver from A to the local currency.

The third option was to use a draft, silver ticket, or money ticket from a bank or money shop, but this would require paying a fee.

However, ordinary people rarely used large ingots in daily transactions; they mostly used loose silver.

This is why there were "Kuping" and "Shiyin." Kuping was a standardized weight and not circulated, while Shiyin could be circulated and cut to any size.

According to online calculations, the ingots Ye Yuan obtained weighed about 1850 grams.

At the current silver price of about 4 yuan per gram,

This means that each of Ye Yuan's ingots, if sold at the regular silver price, would be worth only 7400 yuan. The two large boxes contained 200 such ingots, which would sell for about 1.5 million yuan, leaving Ye Yuan somewhat disappointed.

However, this is based on the regular silver price. If considered as antiques, the price of a silver ingot would not be this low.

Ye Yuan looked up the price of ingots online and found that the prices varied greatly. For the same fifty-tael Qing Dynasty official silver, some websites quoted 30,000 to 50,000 yuan, while others said they could sell for up to 100,000 yuan.

Ye Yuan was not very knowledgeable about antiques, but even if he calculated based on the lowest price of 30,000 yuan per ingot, the ingots would be worth 6 million yuan, which left him very satisfied.

Ye Yuan then took out some porcelain fragments and loose silver and copper coins he found in the sunken ship.

He noticed that these items had been corroded by seawater, with many of the silver pieces discolored and the copper coins illegible.

Ye Yuan thought that these were probably the coins the pirates carried with them and had little value, so he casually threw them into a large box in the corner of his study.

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