Track 28

Track 28.

Moving forward from the 7th century, and 400 years later, we meet Shi Huangdi, one of the first emperors of China.

Sometime around the year 220 BC he took these early forms of currency and simplified them into more basic coins of a circular shape with a distinctive square hole in the middle.

Its design reflected a number of Chinese beliefs.

For example, the round shape symbolised heavenly commandment, while the square symbolised the authority of the emperor.

Some historians suggest that these types of coin had been invented hundreds of years before and that

Shi Huangdi’s coins were derived from ring-shaped jade discs from the Zhou dynasty, which are believed to have been used as royal gifts for dignitaries.

Whatever the case, we do know that Shi Huangdi decreed his new coins as the only legal currency in his empire and perhaps this is the secret of their longevity; they survived for over two thousand years.

The coins themselves were fashioned of gold and bronze and weighed around 8 grams, though this varied as time went by.

Sadly, one thing these coins did not retain was the elaborate design of earlier coins.

Instead Shi Huangdi’s coin was more functional and could be made in a short space of time.

In fact, it can be argued that in order to do this, Shi Huangdi created an early model of what eventually became mass production, though of course a cruder and less efficient version of what we see today.

But an interesting thought nonetheless.