Ancient Chinese Coins vs. European Ancients

jskirwin

I just picked up Jen's book of Chinese Cash and was surprised at how little variation there is in Chinese coinage until the 18th century.
Nearly all of the coins have blank reverses, with the differences limited to size, circular vs. square holes, and calligraphy.

As a newbie to ancients, they seem pretty boring compared to Greco-Roman coins portraying animals and profiles of kings and emperors.

Am I being unfair to the Chinese?

Sapyx

Well, to someone familiar only with "western style" coins (and that includes most of the people on the planet, these days), Chinese cash coins do look boring. For non-Chinese, the language barrier is another obstacle to appreciating cash coins. After all, it's relatively easy for us to read Latin legends on ancient Roman, and Greek isn't that much harder. But I'm a bit of a generalist, so for me collecting coins from both series is cool.

One has to recall that the Chinese invented coinage competely separately from the West, and it evolved in a completely different direction; just about the only similarities between an ancient Chinese coin and an ancient Greek one are they're both round, and both used for money.

In the West, particularly Greece and their cultural descendants, coinage was seen as a medium for expressing art, so coins looked artistic right from the start. In China, early coins were purely economic in function. Art only came much later in the Chinese series, by which time the form of the cash coin had been around for over a thousand years and the government was reluctant to mess around too much with something so stable, so the art was restricted to calligraphy.

In both series of coins, the concept of using coinage for propaganda purposes arose - in the West under the Romans, and in China during the "mediaeval" period by the various warring factions. Personally, I find this aspect of equal interest in both series and something worth pursuing in my collection.

jskirwin

I should note that the Chinese experimented with different shapes early on in their coinage - so as you mention the evolution aspect of their coinage is rather fascinating in itself.