Kangxi Tongbao
(康熙通寶)

Qing dynasty (China)
Value	1wén
Composition	Copper-alloy (brass)
Years of minting	1661–1722
Obverse
Design	Kangxi Tongbao (康熙通寶)
Reverse
Design	See below.

Kangxi Tongbao (traditional Chinese:康熙通寶;simplified Chinese:康熙通宝;pinyin:kāng xī tōng bǎo) refers to an inscription used onChinese cash coins produced during the reign of theKangxi Emperor of theManchu-ledQing dynasty. Under the Kangxi Emperor the weights and standards of thebrass cash coins changed several times and thebimetallic system ofQing dynasty coinage was established. Today Kangxi Tongbao cash coins are commonly used ascharms and amulets where different forms of superstition have developed arounds itsmint marks andcalligraphy.

A notable characteristic is that the outer rim on Kangxi Tongbao cash coins on both sides of the coin tend to be quite wide, in contrast to that of the square center hole (方穿,fāng chuān). Apart from the two mints in the capital city ofBeijing operated by the central government, many provincial mints operated intermittently.

After theManchus occupiedBeijing in 1644, the government of the Qing dynasty began the production of theShunzhi Tongbao (順治通寶) cash coins modeled after theHuichang Kaiyuan Tongbao cash coins (會昌開元通寶錢) of theTang dynasty and theDazhong Tongbao (大中通寶) andHongwu Tongbao (洪武通寶) of the earlyMing dynasty. Like these cash coins the Shunzhi Tongbao usedmint marks in the form of a singleChinese character on the reverse side of the coin to indicate their origin. Other types of Shunzhi Tongbao were also cast creating a total of 5 different types.^[1][2][3][4] Under theKangxi Emperor only two of these types were retained, one type had aManchu characters on the left side of the reverse and a Chinese character on the right side of the reverse to indicate the mint of production and was used for provincial mints. The other type had the name of the mint inManchu on the right side with the character "ᠪᠣᠣ" (Boo) on the left which were used for cash coins produced at theMinistry of Revenue andMinistry of Public Works.^[5]

In the year Kangxi 1 (or theGregorian year 1662), all provincial mints in the Qing dynasty were closed down with the exception of theJiangning Mint. Meanwhile in Kangxi 5 (1667) all provincial mints would re-open again but three years later a large number of them would close down due to the high price ofcopper in China at the time. In the year Kangxi 7 (1668), theGuangzhou Mint inGuangdong started casting Kangxi Tongbao cash coins with a weight of 1.4 Mace (1 mace = 3.73 gram) which was heavier than those in many other provinces.^[6] Those responsible for the transportation of copper rarely made the mints in time, and while copper prices were rising daily the Ministry of Revenue still maintained a fixed rate of exchange between copper and silver causing many provincial mints to quickly lose money, while on paper they were still profitable.^[7]

A mint was established inTainan,Taiwan in the year 1689, but it did not produce much cash coins and was closed down in 1692; for this reason Taiwanese Kangxi Tongbao coins tend to be very rare today. Kangxi Tongbao cash coins produced in the province ofYunnan are notably quitereddish in colour; there were at least seven different mints in existence in Yunnan Province during the Kangxi period. After, the governor of the Yunnan andGuizhou found out that there were so much brass cash coins produced by the Yunnan mints. The high supply of the brass cash coins had caused the price of the cash coins relative to silver to reduce. The government needed to pay 30% of cash coins instead of silver as military salary. This proved to be very inconvenient for the soldiers. This later caused disturbances to arise in the military. After the governor of these provinces put down the trouble, he urged the government to cease the production of cash coins in the province of Yunnan and to pay the soldiers exclusively in silver. All the Yunnan Mints were then closed down in the year Kangxi 28 (1689).^[8] Between the years 1674 and 1681 during theRevolt of the Three Feudatories the province of Yunnan was in the hands of the rebelWu Sangui and later his grandsonWu Shifan who cast his own cash coins with their own inscriptions there, these cash coins didn't use the same mint marks as the Kangxi Tongbao.^[9]

In 1684, the ratio of copper tozinc in the alloys in the Kangxi Tongbao cash coins was reduced from 70% to 60% all while the standard weight was lowered to 1qián again and were known as Zhongqian (重錢), while the central government's mints in Beijing started producing cash coins with a weight of 0.7qián known as Xiaoqian (小錢) or Qingqian (輕錢). The Kangxi Tongbao was officially fixed againstsilver with a ratio of 1000 Zhongqian pertael of silver in an attempt to establish abimetallic system.^[10] The Xiaoqian were only worth 0.7 tael of silver perstring of 1000 coins (which would equate to 14.3 Xiaoqian perfen of silver), however by the middle of the eighteenth century the Xiaoqian disappeared from circulation.^[11]

By 1702 all provincial mints were closed again due to the aforementioned circumstances.^[12]

Under the Kangxi Emperor cash coins with the inscription Kangxi Tongbao were produced with both aChinese character and aManchu character on the reverse side of the coin at provincial mints,^[5] while the Ministries of Revenue and Public Works in the city ofBeijing,Zhili exclusively used Manchu characters.

Mint mark	Möllendorff	Responsibleministry	Image
Manchu:ᠪᠣᠣ ᠴᡳᠣᠸᠠᠨ	Boo Ciowan	Ministry of Revenue (hùbù, 戶部),Beijing
Manchu:ᠪᠣᠣ ᠶᡠᠸᠠᠨ	Boo Yuwan	Ministry of Public Works (gōngbù, 工部), Beijing

Mint mark (Traditional Chinese)	Mint mark (Simplified Chinese)	Issuing office	Image
同	同	Datong garrison, Shanxi
福	福	Fuzhou, Fujian
臨	临	Linqing garrison, Shandong
東	东	Jinan, Shandong
江	江	Nanchang, Jiangxi
宣	宣	Xuanhua garrison, Zhili
原	原	Taiyuan, Shanxi
蘇	苏	Suzhou, Jiangsu
薊	蓟	Jizhou garrison, Zhili
昌	昌	Wuchang, Hubei
甯	宁	Jiangning, Jiangsu
河	河	Kaifeng, Henan
南	南	Changsha, Hunan
廣	广	Guangzhou, Guangdong
浙	浙	Hangzhou, Zhejiang
臺	台	Taiwan-Fu,Taiwan
桂	桂	Guilin, Guangxi
陝	陕	Xi'an, Shaanxi
雲	云	Yunnan Province
漳	漳	Zhangzhou, Fujian
鞏	巩	Gongchang, Gansu
西	西	Shanxi provincial mint
寧	宁	Ningbo, Zhejiang

In 1713, a special Kangxi Tongbao (康熙通寶) cash coin was issued to commemorate the sixtieth birthday of theKangxi Emperor,^[13] these bronze coins were produced with a special yellowish colour, and these cash coins believed to have "the powers of acharm" immediately when it entered circulation, this commemorative coin contains a slightly different version of the Hanzi symbol "熙", at the bottom of the cash, as this character would most commonly have a vertical line at the left part of it but did not have it, and the part of this symbol which was usually inscribed as "臣" has the middle part written as a "口" instead. Notably, the upper left area of the symbol "通" only contains a single dot as opposed of the usual two dots used during this era. Several myths were attributed to this coin over the following 300 years since it has been cast such as the myth that the coin was cast from molten down "golden" (brass) statues of the 18 disciples of theBuddha which earned this coin the nicknames "the Lohan coin" and "Arhat money" because the Kangxi Emperor was intimately involved withChristian missionaries and developed a contempt forBuddhism. These commemorativekāng xī tōng bǎo cash coins were given to children asyā suì qián (壓歲錢) duringChinese new year, some women wore them akin to how anengagement ring is worn today,^[14] and in ruralShanxi young men wore this specialkāng xī tōng bǎo cash coin between their teeth like men from cities hadgolden teeth. Despite the myths surrounding this coin it was made from acopper-alloy and did not contain any gold but it was not uncommon for people to enhance the coin withgold leaf.^[15] According to David Hartill this myth was first reported around the year 1851 in China and attributes this to similar stories which were circulating about the "Bun"Kan'ei Tsūhō cash coins fromJapan at the time.^[16][17]

Chinese poem coins (Traditional Chinese: 詩錢;Simplified Chinese: 诗钱;Pinyin:shī qián, alternatively 二十錢局名) were Chinese cash coins cast under theKangxi Emperor,^[18][19] a Manchu Emperor known for his Chinese poetry skills and wrote the work "Illustrations of Plowing and Weaving" (耕織圖) in 1696. Under the Kangxi Emperor 23 mints operated at various times with many closing and reopening, the coins produced under the Kangxi Emperor all had the obverse inscriptionKāng Xī Tōng Bǎo (康熙通寶). As the name Kangxi was composed of the characters meaning "health" (康) and "prosperous" (熙)^{[20][21][22][23]} theKāng Xī Tōng Bǎo cash coins were already viewed as having auspicious properties by the Chinese people. As theKāng Xī Tōng Bǎo cash coins were produced at various mints some people placed these coins together to form poems, even though many of these poems did not have any meaning they were composed in adherence to the rules ofClassical Chinese poetry. These coins were always placed together to form the following poems:

It was arranged by a Chinese privatecoin collector using the different mint marks to form a type of a Chinese poetry during theQianlong period and it has now become the favourite target of collection for many coin collectors inMainland China andTaiwan.^[24]

According to an old Chinese superstition the strung "charm" of twenty coins also known as "set coins" (套子錢) only worked if all coins were genuine and this could be tested by placing them on a chicken-coop and if the cocks did not crow during the early morning. As carrying twenty coins together was seen as less than convenient new charms were being produced that had the ten of the twenty mint marks on each side of the coin, unlike the actual cash coins that they're based on these charms tend to have round holes in the middle and are also round in shape. Sometimes they were painted red as the colour red is viewed to be auspicious in Chinese culture. Sometimes these coins had obverse inscriptions wishing for good fortunes and the twenty mint marks on their reverse, these inscriptions include:

Kāng Xī Tōng Bǎo cash coins produced at theMinistry of Revenue and theMinistry of Public Works in the capital city ofBeijing are excluded from these poems.^[25][26]

Because of the popularity of the Kangxi poem coins many later versions of the poem coins were made where the Kangxi era mint marks are used but other inscriptions such as theYongzheng Tongbao,Daoguang Tongbao,Guangxu Tongbao, Etc. are used on the obverse.^[27]

Coin-swords made fromQing dynasty cash coins with the inscription Kangxi Tongbao are considered to be the most effective, this is because the reign of theKangxi Emperor of theQing dynasty lasted an entire 60-year cycle of theChinese calendar and thus according to feng shui cash coins with this inscription represent "longevity".^[28][29][30]

• List of Chinese cash coins by inscription

• Media related toKangxi Tongbao at Wikimedia Commons

• Coins of ancient China
• Kangxi Emperor
• Chinese numismatics
• Cash coins by inscription

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