During the Guangxu years of the late Qing Dynasty, the first modern bank in China appeared, and how did the ancients before this save money.
From shells to currencies made of various precious metals, these coins are very bulky, and before the appearance of banknotes such as silver bills, if you want to trade large amounts, the coins that need to be moved are not a small number.
Although there were no banks in ancient times, in fact, in a very early period, people have begun to save money, in order to save the coins in their hands in case of emergency, people have long used a variety of methods.
The earliest coin is the shell, so the earliest deposit money, is the "shell storage", even the word "storage" itself is next to the shell word, at that time people stored the shell in a very simple way, that is, to find a container, and then put the shell up.
Among the large number of archaeological sites found today, there are many containers dedicated to the storage of shellfish.
With the passage of time, the shell storage containers in the later period, especially in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, have been very exquisite, and there are even containers specially made of bronze, which also proves that some shells at that time were actually extremely precious, far better than metal products such as bronzes.
In the bronze coin period, a kind of container similar to the current piggy bank gradually appeared, and in the pre-Qin and early ancient periods, this object was called "Fluttering Full", which was called this in the Qin and Han Dynasties.
In ancient times, almost every household was full, with a variety of shapes and textures.
Very similar to the current piggy bank, there is a small opening above it, which can only be stuffed with copper coins, gathered to a lesser extent, will be thrown all over the general hanging beam, and when it is needed, it will be broken and the coins inside will be taken out.
Ancient people had a variety of ways of storing property, and the main thing was either to put it in a container such as a full pot, called the canning method, or to find a cellar to bury it, called "cellaring".
The most typical story is "there is no silver in this place for three hundred and two", in fact, it is very common for the ancients to bury coins.
Many people will choose to pack gold and silver treasures in bottles, cans, boxes, boxes, and then dig pits and bury them, this atmosphere even affected the ancients to buy houses, many people buy old houses often dig three feet, hoping to find treasure.
Because many ancients liked to bury treasures in large mansions, there was also a special law at that time, if the new owner found the treasure left by the previous owner, he could get a certain proportion of the distribution, and the others had to be returned to himself or handed over to the officials.
In the Song Dynasty, when people sold houses, there was also a certain amount of "digging money" as a compensation estimate for the treasure that might be dug up in the future.
Although common, the method of storing treasure is really simple, it is easy to be coveted, and if it is buried in the corner of the horn, it often happens that the owner himself forgets, and it is not ideal.
But no matter how shrewd the storage method, a large number of gold, silver and copper coins, carrying and using are very inconvenient, so in the Song Dynasty, there was a very great invention, that is, paper money, which was called Jiaozi at that time, that is, silver bills.
With the advent of paper money, specialized storage and exchange agencies, also known as ticket numbers, appeared at merchant distribution points.
In the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, commerce was extremely prosperous, and a large number of large transactions made the use of bills very frequent, at this time, many people deposited the money in their hands into the ticket number, that is, the money bank, which became a mainstream way of saving money.