Chapter 146: The Divergence of Coin and Script

"Patrol Leader, bartering with cloth is still far too troublesome."

On his third day as a clerk in the Qin camp, Chen Ping had taken the "cookhouse squad" corporal to buy vegetables and meat. As soon as they returned, he shared his thoughts with Heifu — by now, so long as each spoke a little slower, the two could manage simple communication.

"Bolts of silk and hemp are only suited for large-scale trade. Otherwise, they inconvenience both buyer and seller. Besides, the camp doesn't have much cloth left. Using coin for goods is the only sustainable long-term method."

Heifu nodded. The cloth they had was mostly seized at Waihuang. Spoils like these did not have to be turned over to the public stores, so Yang Xiong had distributed a share to every platoon leader. Unwilling to pocket it all himself, Heifu had made clothes for soldiers who lacked summer garments, and now very little remained.

The banliang coins awarded after the battles at Chenliu and Waihuang, on the other hand, still numbered in the thousands.

So he said to Chen Ping, "I already have an idea. I just need a local man to check it for gaps and flaws."

With that, Heifu had Chen Ping, Zhong Ming, Li Xian, and the others come inside, then placed on the table one Qin banliang coin, one Wei 'jin spade coin', and one Wei 'huan coin'.

"Chen Ping, tell us — what are the forms and standards of these coins?"

As a local, Chen Ping naturally knew. After acknowledging the order, he began to speak with ease and fluency.

It turned out that the Wei coinage system had been laid down by Li Kui under Marquis Wen of Wei, and later supplemented and perfected by the great merchant Bai Gui under King Hui of Wei. In types and forms, it was rather more complex than Qin's.

The most common was the jin spade coin, a flat-shouldered hollow-socket spade coin, with three denominations: 'two-jin, one-jin, half-jin'. One jin in Wei was roughly equivalent to thirty grams in later ages. About one hundred jin could be converted into the larger unit of weight, the lüe. For example, the jin spade coin on the table, minted at Daliang, bore on its face the Wei-script inscription 'Liang Zheng Yi Bai Dang Lüe', meaning this was a coin worth one jin, and one hundred such coins equalled one lüe of bronze.

The most distinctive mark of Wei coinage was that the characters on the face were written right-side up, while on the reverse there was a 'Liang' character written upside down — likely an anti-counterfeiting measure.

But in Heifu's view, though the intent of this anti-counterfeiting measure was good, in practice it was utterly useless. Because unlike Qin, which strictly prohibited private minting, private coinage ran rampant in Wei. The coins on the market ranged from fine to debased; some hollow-socket spade coins were clearly marked two-jin, yet in reality were thin as paper, their true weight not even reaching half a jin…

Chen Ping said helplessly, "Some of the bad coin isn't even privately minted locally. Wei may be wealthy, but the Wei princes live in extravagance, and every year they must spend vast sums of coin and silk on birthday tribute to the King of Qin. The inner treasury has been drained several times. For that reason, Daliang, too, often mints debased coin for profit."

All of this inside information came from Chen Ping. Apart from Heifu, Li Xian found it somewhat unbelievable, because in Qin, privately minting debased coin was punishable by penal labour as a wall-builder, and the authorities would certainly never take the lead in minting bad coin, for that would deal a massive blow to public trust.

From this one could see that Wei's economy had long been on the brink of collapse.

Chen Ping also said that besides the hollow-socket spade coins, Wei had one other type of coin — the other coin on the table: the huan coin. It closely resembled the banliang, but the hole was round, much like a ring.

"The huan coin is used specifically for trade with Qin. The weight marked is roughly half a liang, or one liang, but in truth it is not so…"

Once Chen Ping explained, everyone understood that it was not only the jin spade coins that were mostly bad — the huan coins were the same. The early minted huan coins were still acceptable, but in recent years the hole in the huan coins on the market had been cast larger and larger, which also meant the weight was growing lighter and lighter.

"In other words, where originally one half-liang huan coin could be exchanged for one Qin banliang, in reality it takes two huan coins to equal the weight of one banliang coin."

With this explanation from Chen Ping, the work ahead became much easier. Heifu had long intended to set an exchange ratio between Qin and Wei coin, so that Qin coin could also be used to buy goods at the village market, reducing the friction between the local garrison and the traders.

It was just that when Qin men produced banliang coins, the local traders insisted on exchanging strictly according to the units marked on the coins — one banliang for one huan coin, or four banliang for one flat-shouldered jin spade weighing one jin.

That way, the traders profited, but weren't the Qin soldiers taking a loss?

"How about one banliang for two huan coins, and one banliang for a half-jin spade?" Li Xian suggested. This exchange ratio would greatly benefit the Qin army, allowing them to save quite a bit of money during their garrison duty.

Chen Ping, however, hastily urged against it. "That must absolutely not be done."

"The weight of Wei coins is not uniform. If, regardless of weight, we uniformly apply this exchange method, the local traders will suffer heavy losses. I fear that when that happens, the marketplace will be full of bitter complaints — bad for the Patrol Leader's reputation, and bad for the stability of this village."

Though he was working for the Qin army, he was still a local man. When something threatened the interests of his fellow villagers, Chen Ping would of course argue his case with all reason.

"Then what do you suggest?" Li Xian was somewhat displeased with Chen Ping's 'eating from one bowl and helping the other side'.

"I do have an idea." Heifu thought for a moment, then said to the group, "We can ensure that neither the Qin army nor the village suffers any loss, that trade is fair for the duration of our garrison, and that it leaves a benefit for those who come after…"

…

Early the next morning, at the entrance to the bustling Huyou village market, a wooden board was nailed to the market gate. Those who could read crowded over to look, and saw on it a hand of very beautifully written Wei script. The gist was that, after discussion among the three village officials, henceforth Qin banliang coins would circulate on the market alongside Wei coins, and would serve as the standard official currency — traders were forbidden to refuse them!

For common market goods, such as vegetables and meat, grain, and cloth, a standard price was given in banliang coins, with upward or downward fluctuation not to exceed one-tenth!

The village market traders had no great complaints. Though this meant they could not earn extra coin, neither did it cause them any harm.

This was what Heifu had settled on yesterday, after learning the forms and relative quality of Wei coinage, and then visiting the Zhang residence to discuss it with the Zhang brothers.

Zhang Bo had initially been reluctant to agree, but was frightened into compliance by a few words from Heifu.

"Never mind that Wei coin is bad and Qin coin good — the simple fact is that now this village belongs to Qin, and the widespread use of Qin coin is only right and proper."

"This has already been implemented in Chenliu. It is only a matter of time for Huyou Village. Out of regard for the long and amicable working relationship I have shared with you two gentlemen, I will secretly inform you: in a few more years, not only will Qin coin prevail throughout the Wei territories, I fear even the local Wei coin will be completely banned!"

"I urge you two gentlemen, once the walls of Daliang are breached and the Wei lands are pacified, to exchange all the Wei coin in your households for Qin coin as quickly as possible. Otherwise, you will regret it when it is too late!"

…

With the buying-and-selling problem resolved, Chen Ping also began his own proper work: writing proclamations and documents for the Qin army that needed to be translated into Wei script — the announcement posted at the village market yesterday had been written in his own hand.

But first, Chen Ping had to become proficient in Qin script as well. Fortunately, he was clever by nature and learned very quickly.

Come to think of it, ever since King Ping moved the capital east, the realm had entered a fragmentation lasting over five hundred years. Centuries of continuous warfare had not only brought about a fractured landscape of feudal lords each ruling their own domain — even culture had begun to 'go its own way'.

The coinage that had caused the Qin men such great trouble in local life a few days earlier was one example. Beyond that, the divergence of written characters was another major obstacle hindering communication and exchange between the states.

The cultures of each state developed in relative independence, and their scripts took on strong local colour, inevitably making the phenomenon of character variation between regions prominent, and thus giving rise to variant character forms.

As the ducal houses declined and the scholar-official class rose, the pursuit of simpler, faster writing and the broader application of script also led to simplification and cursiveness in character forms, producing abbreviated variant characters.

Learning was passed down from generation to generation, but it was all transmitted by copying with brush onto bamboo slips and wooden tablets, so writing errors were unavoidable. Errors passed down and accepted became corrupted variant characters.

This was the reason for the differences that emerged among the scripts of the seven states.

Chen Ping did not have family circumstances as good as Zhang Cang's. He only began learning Wei script at the age of ten. After reaching adulthood, during his travels to study in a neighbouring county, he had come into contact with several scholars from Han and Zhao, and had seen Zhao script and Han script.

The scripts of these three states, in truth, did not differ greatly, because Zhao, Wei, and Han had only split apart two hundred years ago; before that, they all belonged to Jin.

But apart from the scripts of the Three Jin, there were four other script systems: Qin, Qi, Yan, and Chu. These four states were far from the Central Plains, situated in the borderlands, each geographically quite independent, and their cultures were vastly different. Although they all originated from the Zhou dynasty's bronze-inscription greater seal script, depending on their different regional cultures, they had already begun to show signs of gradually drifting apart.

Qi script and Yan script, a man of the Central Plains could still make out. But faced with the dragon-flying, phoenix-dancing bird-worm script on Chu silk manuscripts, they could only stare wide-eyed, utterly helpless.

In Chen Ping's eyes, however, Qin script was very special. Perhaps it was because Qin had inherited the old Zhou heartland and absorbed a great deal of Zhou culture. Perhaps it was because the Qin people were conservative and rigid, and over several hundred years had doggedly adhered to the orthodox character forms of the Zhou house, only gradually moving toward a more regular and balanced writing style, transitioning toward the small seal script.

So understanding Qin script was not, in fact, very difficult.

Heifu would sometimes come to inspect his work and ask Chen Ping how he was progressing. When he heard Chen Ping say that in just two or three days he had already learned seven or eight-tenths of the Qin characters that differed from Wei characters, a look of astonishment crossed his face.

"How can it be this astonishingly fast?"

Chen Ping cupped his hands and said, "The Patrol Leader need not be surprised. The gap between Qin script and Wei script is really not large. Out of every hundred characters, roughly half have essentially the same strokes, differing only in the style of writing. Another quarter have different strokes, but the forms are similar — a careful look is enough to tell them apart. Only one quarter are completely different variant characters that look entirely unlike each other, and those need to be learned anew."

"So that's how it is."

Heifu nodded, and then heard Chen Ping sigh with emotion. "The feudal lords governed by force and would not be unified under the past; they hated how rites and music harmed their own interests, and so each discarded the classical texts and records… Caps and robes differ in cut, speech differs in sound, and writing differs in form. Only after these past few days have I truly understood how coinage, speech, writing, and weights and measures can, for no good reason, build such vast chasms and barriers between the people of two states in their dealings, travels, and trade."

"Rest assured — the era of using one's neighbour as a drainage ditch is about to end."

Heifu laughed heartily, and declared to Chen Ping in prophecy, "Just as the territories and common people of these seven states under Heaven will all be unified under Qin, so too will all of these things — whether coinage, weights and measures, or writing — henceforth be merged into one."

The unification of these things was not something the Qin court simply dreamed up on a whim. Not only in Heifu's own Huyou Village, but in Yangwu County, in Chenliu, in Waihuang, and across the Qin army's occupied territories, similar work was being carried out to varying degrees.

Because people always hope for whatever is most convenient. Once political barriers cease to exist, apart from spoken accents being too entrenched to change, all those other deliberately manufactured and mutually divergent things lose their reason for being.

Heifu imagined that now, within the city of Xianyang, the King of Qin was preparing for unification...

He continued speaking to Chen Ping, who was listening somewhat dazedly: "The various states no longer divide the realm, and scholars from every region can exchange and travel without hindrance!"

"Unify the cart tracks, unify the written script, unify the norms of conduct!"

"This is no longer the idle fancy or distant hope of past sages, but a future that will arrive before long!"

(End of chapter)