In many ancient literary works, as well as modern film and television works that describe ancient times, it is easy to see a scene, that is, a group of people go to the restaurant, eat and drink a lot, all kinds of fine wine and delicacies keep going up, after eating directly throw down a piece of silver, they go out directly, and some of the shops are not only not blocked, but also will thank you very much, why is this?
Doesn't silver need to be weighed? Are some shops not afraid of not having enough money for food? In fact, they really don't have to be afraid of not having enough money for food, which is closely related to the value of ancient money and the purchasing power of the goods it can convert into.
Ancient Chinese used money very early, and when there were no humans on the Japanese archipelago, the ancient people of China began to use money to trade between daily lives. As early as the Xia Dynasty, due to the frequent commercial activities, money gradually began to become a common object, but it was really popular in the world until the Eastern Zhou Dynasty.
In the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, due to the division of the princes, the countries under the world were in constant war, the population was rapidly and large-scale migration, and the population migration corresponded to a large number of exchanges and circulation between goods, such an era environment made the circulation of money more frequent, and different princely states introduced their own national legal tender, such as the sword currency of the State of Qi, the cloth currency of the State of Zhao, the ring money of the State of Qin, and so on.
Ring money was at first the shape of a circular hole, and then gradually evolved into the shape of a round square hole, and when Qin Shi Huang established the Qin Dynasty in 221 BC, he unified the currency of all parts of the world, and promoted the ring money of the round square hole to all parts of the country, which is also the copper coin that we often see in later generations, until the Qing Dynasty, this copper coin is still in use, which is the most commonly used currency by ordinary people.
How powerful is the purchasing power of this copper coin? The southern Liang scholar Yin Yun wrote in his works that "the waist is wrapped around 100,000 guan, riding a crane to Yangzhou", from which an idiom "waist wrapped in ten thousand guan" was born, which is synonymous with wealth, which has always been a thousand copper coins, and ten thousand is ten million copper coins, which has been regarded as a very rich and wealthy family in ancient times.
Usually people use copper coins when making small payments, but in case of the need to use large payments, copper coins are obviously not so convenient, so silver, as a metal more valuable than copper, naturally also began to become money, and use "two" as a unit, so silver is also called silver two, one or two silver can basically be equivalent to a thousand copper coins, to the end of the Qing Dynasty, it can be equivalent to more than two thousand three hundred copper coins.
That is to say, the value of silver in ancient times is very high, its purchasing power can be converted into commodities is also very amazing, if it is not for large-scale economic activities such as buying houses and buying land, silver is usually not needed, especially when eating, it is basically a matter of dozens of copper coins, Mr. Lu Xun wrote in his work "Kong Yiji": "Kong Yiji ... Discharge nine big coins."
When Kong Yiji went to the tavern to drink, even if he had nine copper coins, he felt that he was already very noodles, so it can be seen that it didn't cost much money to eat a meal at that time, and the ancients used silver to settle the bill when eating, and also said "don't look for it", the little second brother will definitely only be happy, and there will never be half a point to block.