CHAPTER V.

_CURRENT COIN IN CHINA._

Taels.--Dollars.--Exchange.--Silver Shoes.--Foreign Mints.

She was not long out from England, and a _comprador_ order was as yet an unnatural phenomenon to her. She supposed it was something like a cheque upon a bank, or a circular note, with which Continental travel had made her intimately acquainted. "What is the value of a dollar in English money?" she had asked before starting on her tour from Shanghai. "Oh yes, I understand it depends upon the exchange. I used always to keep myself in gloves on what one gained in Italy. Now it is horrid; one gains nothing. I don't quite know why it is. But how much _about_ is the dollar worth, when exchange is--is--nothing particular?" Then she had such long speeches made to her, and heard so much conflicting information, she felt deafened, but ultimately arrived at the conclusion that there were about--yes! _about_ six dollars in an English pound, and there ought not to be so many. Now, somewhat to her consternation, she discovered that her _comprador_ orders had taels printed upon them; so she made out her order in taels, secretly wondering what they were. She had never seen them.

"Do you think I got the right exchange?" she asked of her Boy; then, trying to suit herself to his needs, and speak English "as it is spoke," "He pay my right money?"

"My no savey what thing one taelee catchee Hankow side," said the Boy, with flippancy but decision. He came from farther inside the province.

She felt abashed, and supposed she must just take her money, hoping it was right. Next time she would be wiser. Arrived at Ichang, she scratched out taels, and was about to write in dollars.

"Dollars! Dollars aren't known at Ichang," said the Captain.

"What had I better do?" she asked of the oldest resident. Again she was overwhelmed with words. But she gathered she ought to ask for taels.

"Taels don't exist," said the Captain. "I never saw a tael, did you? He'll bring you your money in lumps of silver, if you don't take care."

"Yes," said the old resident, "you had better not get lumps of silver."

"They vary in value, according to the quality of the silver," persisted the Captain. "You won't know what to do with them. You can't break them up. You will have to weigh them. And what can you pay for in lumps of silver? Nobody will take them for anything you want to buy."

They actually both talked to her as if _she_ wished for solid, uncoined lumps of silver. She felt confounded! But, determined to preserve her calm, she said, "I had better write, and say I want so many strings of cash, then, had I? Ten thousand cash? Twenty thousand cash? I can't carry them, you know; and I don't know where I can keep them. But I must have at least so much money in hand, if it is only to pay for my washing."

"Pay for your washing!" they both burst out, as if that were a most superfluous proceeding.

"I wouldn't write for cash, I think," began a third adviser. "I would write down how many taels you require, and say you'd take it in cash."

"Then I shall never know if I get the right amount."

"A--h!" they all said, waving their hands, as if no one ever did know if he got the right amount in China.

"It varies. It varies from day to day," said the oldest resident.

Needless to relate, she never saw those cash, never heard how many she had received, nor where they were stowed away. The Boy said he had them, it was all right. He said also that at Ichang it was very shocking how few cash they gave for the tael.

She was determined she would learn Chinese, of course! Was she not just out from home? And being just out from home, and anxious to be polite to every one, it was a trouble to her mind that she did not know how to greet her teacher when he came. She stood up, and rubbed her hands together, which, she understood was the Chinese for a curtsey; but it seemed feeble without a word, so she said, "Koom Shee! Koom Shee!" as she had heard the country people say.

"Oh! you should not say _Koom Shee! Koom Shee!_ Not to a teacher, who comes every day," said a Sinologue.

"He says it is quite right," said she. "I am sure I understand that much. But he said I could also say _Tsao_!"

"Oh no--no! Not _Tsao_," said the Sinologue; but he never made any suggestion as to what she should say.

"I could not think what I ought to say when he went away," she continued. "But he says _Man man tso_."

"_Oh no!_ that is a _great deal_ too much to a teacher who comes every day."

"Well, that is what he says," she repeated rather wearily, after having waited a little to see if he would suggest any polite speech for her. "I do want to say something polite."

"It is very difficult to be polite in Chinese," said the Sinologue solemnly. That seemed final. But she asked another Sinologue. "No, I should not say _Man man tso_. Not _Man man tso_," said he dreamily. "Not to a teacher--who comes every day."

"But what do you say?" asked she in desperation.

"Well, it is very polite to say _Shao pei_--I don't go to the door with you, you know; I only go a few steps with you. That is the polite thing to say after a call from a mandarin."

"But surely it would be polite to go to the door?"

"Oh yes--in China it would."

"Well, I think anywhere it would be _polite_."

"Yes, but not--not from a lady. It would not be expected."

"A--h! yes! then I can say _Shao pei_." However, she did not feel quite satisfied, and she watched her opportunity.

Next time she heard a Sinologue converse with a Chinaman, she listened to hear what he would say in parting. Alas! it was not _Man man tso_, it was not _Shao pei_.

"What was that you said to him in taking leave?"

"Oh--I didn't say anything,"--with the instinctive horror of being detected in possibly a false tone.

"Yes--yes, you said something as you turned away and took leave. And I do so want to know what it was, that I may know what to say."

"Oh, I said----" mumbling very much, so that it was impossible to hear what he said. "I don't think it was the thing to say to a man of his station and quality. I think I should have said---- Let me see--I really don't know what was the right thing for me to say."

And so now she is giving it up--giving up being polite in Chinese, giving up ever ascertaining the value of money or the price of anything. For how can things have fixed prices where money has none? There is only one comfort to her soul: if any one looks offended, or if a too sensitive conscience makes her fear she has given cause of offence, she promptly says _Tetsui_--"I am to blame, I apologise." No one has yet made distinctly evident that he does not understand her, nor has any Sinologue yet told her she is wrong. _Tetsui_ is therefore the one golden word for her. And while she is in China she foresees she must live in one constant state of being to blame.

In this manner I at the time recorded my first impression of the coinage and language of China. But the matter of payment is even more complicated than I then fancied. The only coinage of China is copper cash, of which about forty go to a penny. They are round, with a hole in the middle, and generally about a thousand are strung on two strings and tied together; and when carried, hanging over the shoulder, they look like so many snakes. But I say about a thousand advisedly; for there are generally a number of small and comparatively worthless cash in every string, the average amount of these varying in different parts. The lumps of silver with which my friends threatened me are made up into what are called "shoes," but what look like very large coarse thimbles. These are of various degrees of purity, and their purity has to be tested before they are weighed or broken up. In Chungking there were three different degrees of purity in different parts of the city; therefore it made quite a considerable difference whether you agreed to pay a sum of money in the upper, lower, or middle town. And the result of so much difficulty about payment is that every one is in debt to every one else, keeping a sort of running account going.

Of late years foreign mints have been started in several places; and lest this chapter should seem altogether too frivolous, I here subjoin the essay that gained the prize, when, at the Polytechnic Institution in 1890, the Governor of Ningpo started an essay competition, giving as his theme:

"The south-eastern provinces now have much foreign money in circulation, and the natives consider it a great convenience to trade. Should China set about coining gold and silver money? Would it circulate freely? Would it be advantageous to the country, or the reverse?"

The Governor himself looked over the essays, and awarded the palm to the composition of Mr. Yang, a B.A. of Kwangtung Province, of which the following is a translation:

"Those who treat at the present time of the causes which are draining away the wealth of China to foreign countries are, as a rule, in the habit of confining their observations to two of these causes: the importation of foreign opium, and the purchase of foreign ships and munitions of war. They appear to be ignorant, indeed, for the most part, that there is another cause at work, persistent, insidious, whose effects are more far-reaching than either.

"The first silver money brought to China from abroad was the so-called 'Luzon Dollar,' coined by the Spaniards from the product of the mines which they had acquired in America, a new country first settled by them. The Spanish dollar was followed by others, made in the same style--first the American, and then the Japanese. From Kwangtung and Fukien these invaders spread to Kiangsu and Chekiang, Kiangsi, Anhui, and Hupeh, in the order named, with great rapidity. Their beauty and convenience were soon in everybody's mouth, and the loss to the country became heavier and heavier as their importation increased.

"To speak of loss from the influx of foreign dollars may appear paradoxical to those who have only eyes for the palpable loss to the country caused by the importation of foreign opium and manufactures and the purchase of foreign ships and cannon. Very little reflection, indeed, suffices to show the disastrous tendency of exchanging for a useless weed the bounteous produce of our harvests, of deluding with new-fangled inventions the practical minds of our people, of spending on a gun or a ship tens of thousands of taels. But I shall endeavour to show that the proposition is no paradox, and that the loss to China caused by the influx of foreign dollars is, if less visible on the surface, at bottom none the less real.

"During the reigns of Tao Kwang and Hien Fêng (1821-1862), to buy each of these dollars China parted with eighty-five tael cents; and as the real value was seventy-two tael cents, on every dollar which she purchased she lost thirteen tael cents. As, taking all the provinces together, she must have been purchasing at least forty or fifty million dollars every year, she must have been losing every year by exchange the enormous sum of four or five million taels.

"Times have changed; but vast numbers of dollars are yearly imported from various countries, most of them composed of one-tenth alloy; and, in payment of this silver blended with baser metal, our pure silver is shipped away in heaps. Moreover, dollars which are worth at most seventy-two or seventy-three tael cents are sold in market at one, two, three, or four tael cents more than that. Such a drain will end in exhausting our silver supply, even if we had mountains of it, if not checked betimes.

"We cannot prevent the importation of foreign dollars, nor prohibit their use by the people; for the people wish for them, although they are depleting the country of its wealth. There appears to me only one way of checking this depletion, and that is by China coining dollars herself.

"Opponents will say, even if China coin them, they will not circulate. They will point to two previous instances where such an attempt was made and failed. The first was towards the end of the reign of Tao Kwang (about 1850): two officials obtained permission from the Governor of Chekiang to start a silver-mint, and everybody looked at the coins, rung them, and declined to have anything to do with them. The second experiment was made at Wusih by Mr. Lu Sueh-tsun: he turned out dollars which compared favourably with foreign dollars in every particular except one--namely, that nobody would use them. The opponents of the measure point to these two examples, and say the coinage of dollars in China will never succeed.

"Some of these opponents do not go so far, but merely say that, even if the Chinese Government is able to put home-made dollars into circulation, it can only be in the southern and eastern provinces, as in the north and west the people, accustomed to sycee and paper money, would shrink from the manifold inconveniences involved in a sudden change to a dollar medium of exchange.

"This appears to me more the language of narrow-minded pedants than of practical men of the world. Which one of all who stand under China's sky and feed off China's fields but desires his country's exaltation and the depression of foreigners? If to-day all love foreign money, it is because there is as yet no Chinese money. Once let there be Chinese money, and we shall see how many will leave it for foreign. The two instances alleged above only show that the coins which people looked at, rung, and rejected were false in look and false in ring. The semi-private way in which they were coined in a village was in itself enough to excite the suspicions of the great mass of the public. An Imperial Mint, openly conducted and turning out good work, would arouse no such suspicions; and its money would very soon be current, not only in the provinces of the south and east, but also in those of the north and west, for the following reasons:

"The travelling merchant and trader of the north and west has now to carry with him both silver sycee and copper cash. Copper cash is heavy, and it is impossible to carry much value in that form; whilst the carrying about of silver entails many and grievous losses in exchange. It is natural to suppose that he would welcome as the greatest boon a gold and silver currency which, by its portability and uniformity of value, would relieve him of the obstacles which the present system in vogue in the north and west spreads in the path of commerce.

"The opponents of an Imperial Chinese Mint for the precious metals commonly adduce four dangers, the contemplation of which, they say, should make China hesitate to incur them. Let us look them in the face. They are, firstly, the facility of counterfeiting the new coinage; secondly, the difficulty of coinage, if commenced; thirdly, the loss to China's prestige by an imitation of foreign manufactures; fourthly, the possible venality of officials and workmen in the Mint.

"Would it not be the depth of pusillanimity, the extreme of unreasonableness, for our great nation to give up, for fear of dangers such as these, a plan which, carried out under the guidance and control of well-selected men, will admittedly dam the outflow of our wealth, and put an end to our impoverishment, which is now going on year after year for the benefit of foreigners?

"The impossibility of coining the precious metals without alloy will no longer afford the foreigner a profit. This profit will go to our own Government, who will not be taking it from the people for nothing, but amply earning it by giving them a universal uniform medium of exchange. Its universality and uniformity will relieve the honourable merchant of the present uncertainty of exchange, and deprive the shifty speculator of his present inducement to gambling in time-bargains dependent on the rise and fall (_mai kʽung_).

"I began this essay by enumerating various evils which are sapping the wealth and power of China. How best to counteract these evils is a problem which our statesmen and politicians are now devoting their zealous endeavours to solve. The measures hitherto proposed involve, when compared with that which I have advocated, a larger expenditure at the outset, and do not seem to promise in any instance so speedy a return of benefit to the nation. A gold and silver coinage by the Imperial Government would, in all probability, in a very few years be conferring on every province of the empire advantages in comparison with which the initial inconveniences would hardly be worthy of attention. It is, of course, an essential condition of the success of the Mint that it should be organised in such a complete manner as to leave no contingency unprovided for, and thus to ensure its stability and permanence. I shall be happy if any of my humble remarks are worthy to contribute to such a result."

Mr. Yang's essay seems already to have borne fruit, and nothing could more check the little peculations so rife in China as a proper coinage of the same value all through the country. Yet such is the innate disorder and corruption attendant upon all Government undertakings in China, that, without the supervision of the despised "foreigner," all such schemes must fail in gaining the confidence of the people, as they have notably failed hitherto. While we were in Chungking, the Viceroy there introduced dollars coined by the Viceroy of Hupeh; but as the local officials refused to take these dollars in payment of taxes except at a discount of 3 per cent., nominally for "shroffage," the people naturally refused them, and they are now no longer to be seen. The Chinese prefer the Mexican dollar, firstly, because they are familiar with it; secondly, because they can depend upon it. The statement in Mr. Yang's jejune essay that the Chinese give pure silver in exchange for foreign dollars containing 10 per cent. alloy is, of course, absurd. Copper cash form the real currency of the masses in China, and it is the fluctuations between this, the only current coinage, of late years shamefully debased, and silver (amounting in 1897 to 30 per cent.) that seriously disturbs the equanimity of "the honourable merchant." Unfortunately, so far each Viceroy seems to be setting up his own mint, irrespective of others. The idea of a Central Government, managing the customs, posts, coinage, or even the army and navy, is altogether alien to the Chinese mind.