Appreciation of the coinage of Datong Province in the Qing Dynasty
Collecting Circles, No. 07, 2012, Yao Xinrong
In China's more than two thousand years of coinage history, there are many places where money can be minted. However, there are few places where it is possible to mint landed currency. Datong, a famous cultural city with a long history, was minted in the early Qing Dynasty with the national currency "Shunzhi Tongbao" and "Kangxi Tongbao" engraved with "Datong". Although the money was small, it laid the foundation for the economic recovery of the Qing Dynasty and the prosperity of Kangqian, and also added artistic treasures to the ancient Datong.
Datong Province was one of the first coin minting bureaus approved by the Qing court, and it was also a money bureau with a long minting time in the early Qing Dynasty. According to historical records: in the first year of Shunzhi (1644), the Qing army entered the customs, set the capital in Beijing, and established the Great Qing State. The economy was paralyzed by the turmoil of the war and the lack of money. In order to reverse the situation, the Qing government resumed coinage. In the second year of Shunzhi, Datong Province set up a money bureau and began to mint "Shunzhi Tongbao" money, Qian Wenkai, straight reading, and the Chinese character "Tong" behind it. In August of the sixth year of Shunzhi (1649), Datong general Jiang led an army against the Qing, but was suppressed after several months of siege by the Qing government, and Datong City was also damaged by the war. Datong Province and Datong Qian Bureau were forced to relocate to YangheCheng (present-day Yanggao County, formerly known as Yanghewei). In the sixth year of Shunzhi, Yanghe Wei was promoted to Yanghe Prefecture, and the Qian Bureau was renamed Yanghe Bureau with its station in Yanghe City, and the "Shunzhi Tongbao" was cast with two types of money, "Yang" on the back and "Yang" on the back. In the ten years of Shunzhi, he also cast "Shunzhi Tongbao" back "Yang Yili" money, indicating that each coin was folded into one cent of silver. In the thirteenth year of Shunzhi (1656), Datong City rebuilt Datong Province, restored the Datong Money Bureau, and minted "Shunzhi Tongbao" back "same cent" money. In the seventeenth year of Shunzhi (1660), the "Shunzhi Tongbao" was minted with Chinese "Tongbao" and the Chinese character for money. In the first year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1662), the Datong Money Bureau minted the "Kangxi Tongbao" with the Chinese character "Tong" for several years. In the later period, due to the shortage of copper sources in datong area, the coinage of Datong Coin Bureau decreased year by year, and the coins minted were light and thin, the text was weak, and there were more editions. In the first year of Yongzheng, the Qing government decided to set up only one money bureau in each province, and Shanxi Province retained the Taiyuan Fu Money Bureau, changed the name of the bureau, referred to as "Baojin Bureau", and the Datong Fu Money Bureau was revoked and stopped minting.
The author is a coin collector, and over the years, when collecting coins, he has never forgotten to collect Datong coins, and with a love for his hometown, he deeply cherishes each Datong coin. Especially in recent years, Datong money has also been popular in the field of coin collection, and the various editions of Datong money and the history of minting have also attracted the attention of scholars and academics, making Datong money with historical value and cultural relics value a new bright spot. In the future, the author will still insist on collecting Datong coins and discovering new versions of Datong coins from them, so as to promote the historical research and cultural relics of Datong Province's coinage. The coinage of Datong Province during the Qing Dynasty is displayed for everyone to appreciate. At the same time, it also provides a strong basis for enriching the study of coinage in Datong Province of the Qing Dynasty.