As the saying goes, "three years of Qing prefect, 100,000 snowflakes of silver", in the costume drama, we can often see the scene of silver trading, some are whole ingots of the yuan treasure, some are small pieces of broken silver. I don't know if you have ever thought about this problem, broken silver like a small stone size, there is no specific denomination marked on it, so how do people use it when trading?
Where did the broken silver come from
In fact, ancient silver was originally cast silver ingots, but because the denomination is relatively large and the smallest also has one or two, it is very inconvenient in daily use, so people use scissors to cut large pieces of silver ingots into small pieces for daily small transactions, most of the ancient silver is pure silver, so the texture is softer, and it can be cut open with steel scissors. Because there is no accurate denomination of broken silver because of its different sizes, it is weighed with a special "戥 [děng] zi" (also known as 戥) when paying.
Nickname
It is said that it was a precision instrument invented by Liu Chengsi in the Song Dynasty to measure weight, and was specially used to weigh gold, silver, precious medicines and spices in ancient times. In the classic anti-war TV series "Bright Sword", Li Yunlong has a classic line that has actually pointed out the transaction form of broken silver, that is, "drink in large bowls, eat meat in large pieces, and divide gold and silver on scales."
Official silver
Think about it, if you go to a restaurant to eat and drink, and when you go out to pay the bill, you have to weigh money, that scene is not quite funny. However, this piece of silver is not available everywhere, ordinary people and street vendors are trading with copper coins, if they pay with broken silver, they are likely to be unable to find it.
In ancient times, ordinary people could not afford to use silver
Because black-hearted merchants are everywhere, they also have to look at the color and calculate the proportion of sterling silver. However, since ordinary people do not have many opportunities to use silver, most of them do business or silver shops have special tools and personnel to exchange for broken silver.
After the government collects taxes or the merchant landlords have stored more broken silver, they will melt the broken silver into large silver ingots for the convenience of storage. There must be loss when casting, and collecting more silver money avoids its own loss, which is the origin of the famous gray income "fire consumption".
There is also the fact that in ancient times, especially before the Ming and Qing dynasties, silver was not circulated as a general currency, but circulated as a precious metal commodity, as a reserve currency.
For example, the Song Dynasty, which is recognized as the most economically developed, the monetary system of the Song Dynasty was a circulating currency based on iron and copper coins, so it was also called the 'two-money system'. Silver is an important commodity of precious metals, the most famous of which is one and two silver consistent (one thousand copper consistent), two silver consistent (ten thousand iron consistent).
The dangers of broken silver
After the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, various dynasties promoted paper money to varying degrees, but the authoritarian rulers often did not follow the development law of market money, indiscriminately issued paper money led to the depreciation of the currency, the corresponding market purchasing power declined, and precious metals were further plundered by the market, resulting in the wealth of the country and the people being poor, the people's lives were in hot water, and riots were repeated.
Therefore, the demise of the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties was all affected by peasant uprisings to varying degrees.
This is also the fundamental reason why after the Yongzheng Emperor of the Qing Dynasty ascended the throne, he vigorously promoted the "return of fire to credit" and established a system of raising clean silver.