If you often watch some dramas or literary works with the theme of the modern Republic of China, you should not feel strange to the word "big yellow croaker", which was a name for large gold bars at that time.
In 1946, when the country issued a gold bar called "yellow fish", because its appearance is very exquisite and shiny, divided into five dollars to twelve color weights, the largest twelve weight gold bars, it is also called the big yellow croaker.
After the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the great damage suffered by the country due to the long-term war had not yet subsided, and new wars had emerged, and the authorities at that time were in deep economic difficulties, the domestic economy was on the verge of collapse, and prices were soaring alarmingly.
Song Ziwen, who controlled the economy, began to use extraordinary means in order to stabilize prices, that is, gold.
At that time, although the people in China were very poor, the authorities had a lot of gold, about eight million taels, according to the ideas of Song Ziwen and others, they sold it back to the caged legal tender, and the custody could suppress the price and deal with the economic problem perfectly.
The idea was quickly supported, and in 1946, the Shanghai Stock Exchange was established, and the minting and issuance of gold bars accelerated.
Finally, at the end of the year, on December 23, 1946, gold bars called "yellow fish" officially appeared.
At that time, each "big yellow fish" weighed twelve, the price of one piece reached 4 million French dollars, and the entire Shanghai gold trading market was boiled by a large number of "yellow fish", and the gold price fell by one and a half percent in one day.
But just when Song Ziwen and others were making wishful thinking, unexpected things happened, the second day after the gold plunge, the price soared, people bought red eyes in order to compete for gold, and the gold that was thrown out was snatched up in an instant.
In just two months, the price of yellow croaker soared from 4 million francs per bar to 9.6 million francs.
The original plan to recycle the legal tender by selling gold has not only become a dream bubble, but what is even more frightening is that the price has not only not been able to be suppressed, but the value of the originally worthless legal tender has fallen even more sharply, and the economic problems have been unable to be cleaned up.
At that time, the gold bars of twelve were called large yellow croakers, and one or two were called small yellow croakers, but to be clear, one pound at that time was still sixteen two, in other words, one or two is now 50 grams, and at that time one or two was 31 grams.
In this way, the big yellow croaker is 312 grams of gold bars, and the small yellow croaker is 31 grams of gold bars.
Most of the time in the Republic of China, one or two royals can exchange about thirty silver dollars, gold is very valuable, if there are ten big yellow fish in the family, in the current words, it is appropriate for the multi-millionaire.
At that time, there were not so many large yellow croakers circulating on the market, almost all of them were small yellow croakers and other colors, and in 1949, three small yellow croakers were enough to buy a small courtyard in Beiping.
If you use the current gold price to convert, a large yellow croaker is probably worth more than 100,000 yuan.
Although paper money later became the mainstream, but in special periods such as war, paper money may become waste paper at any time, and those jewelry, calligraphy, paintings and antiques are not reliable for real money and silver, so the yellow croaker is actually more valuable.