Wen │ Yin Bo
Hubu Mint
In the 30th year of the Qing Dynasty (1904), China's earliest national mint, the "General Bureau of Minting Silver Coins", was established in Tianjin, and the following year it was renamed the "Hubu Mint General Factory". Tianjin once had three "mints", namely the "Baojin Bureau" mint organized by Li Hongzhang, the "Beiyang Silver Dollar Bureau Mint" (West Factory) supervised by Yuan Shikai, and the Subsequent Hubu Mint General Factory (East Factory). At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the common currency of Tianjin was varied, with different colors and excessive price differences, resulting in confusion in the use of currency. In order to rectify finance and consolidate rule, and to solve the situation of uneven currency, in the twenty-ninth year of Guangxu (1903), the Qing government decreed the establishment of a general factory for minting silver coins, which was decided by the Finance Department to build a general mint factory in Tianjin. In May of the thirty-first year of Guangxu (1905), the trial minting of copper coins was started, and by the thirty-fourth year of Guangxu (1908), silver coins were in circulation at the Mint Factory. In the 34 years of Guangxu alone, nearly 100 million "Guangxu Yuanbao" silver coins were minted. Subsequently, many other silver dollars of different layouts and varieties were also tried, but because they were not approved by the household department, only the sample money was minted. The large number of approved silver coins minted and used has promoted the reform of modern currency and is a new beginning in China's modern monetary history.
In 1909, the Qing government reorganized the National Copper Dollar Bureau, the minting rights were transferred to the central government and the mints were merged into nine branches, Tianjin was the main factory, and the "Mint Charter" was promulgated, and the name of the provincial mint institutions was "A certain mint branch", and the mint branches were uniformly under the jurisdiction of the Tianjin Mint General Factory, and the number of coins minted in each branch was uniformly dispatched and distributed by the household department. Relying on its strong economic foundation, advanced technical equipment and management level, Tianjin established its position as the national currency manufacturing center in the "three unifications" edict of the Qing court.
In 1912, the Du Branch Mint General Factory merged with the Du Branch Mint Jin Factory (formerly the Beiyang Silver Dollar Bureau) and was renamed "Tianjin Mint General Factory of the Ministry of Finance of China". The Yuandu Branch Mint Jin Factory is called the West Factory, which specializes in minting copper dollars; the Yuandu Branch Mint General Factory is called the East Factory, which specializes in minting silver dollars. The factory is well-organized and well-machined, and it is the largest mint in the country. In the third year of the Republic of China (1914), Wu Dingchang, who was then the minister of finance of the Kuomintang government and the superintendent of the Mint, wrote the inscription "Mint General Factory" for the factory. The factory covers an area of 31,916 square meters, the layout was originally a multi-entry courtyard, with east-west arrow road intervals, brick and wood structure, hard hilltop. The main room is five rooms wide in the west, which is a front porch or "hook-up" type. The west side of the wing is three rooms wide, the plane is mostly "concave shaped, and the entrance brick arch ticket gate tower and brick carved ornaments still exist." During the Republic of China period, the Mint also minted a variety of sample coins and commemorative gold and silver coins, such as commemorative coins minted for Sun Yat-sen, Yuan Shikai, Xu Shichang, Cao Kun, Duan Qirui, Zhang Zuolin, Zhang Xueliang and other celebrities and dignitaries. In 1940, the Mint was closed. The General Mint, which has existed for less than 40 years, has an important position and role in China's financial history, it is China's first national mint, and it is also the largest and most advanced mint center in the late Qing Dynasty, which has made great contributions to maintaining financial order and promoting monetary reform.
The Guangxu Yuanbao minted by the Mint General Factory
The official public number of "Shanghai Bank Museum".