At long last there is a collector's guide that provides a comprehensive overview of the complex, but fascinating world of Chinese cash coins. Covering more than 3,000 years of numismatic history, this long-awaited volume lists, illustrates and values in multiple condition grades a variety of monetary forms issued in Imperial China. Author David Jen is one of the leading experts in Chinese currency and is well respected in both the United States and Asia. His new work is by far the most complete volume available on the topic, offering history and production details for thousands of issues. In addition, the book includes many newly discovered varieties not listed in any other reference source.

Illustrated introductory guide to the history and use of coins and money in China

Illustrated Catalog of Chinese Coins by Eduard Kann Vol. 3 of 3 Sinkiang, Tibet and Mongolian Coins plus Gold, Forgery and Fantasy Coins Dr. Eduard Kann (1880-1962) was the world's leading authority on Chinese coins and on the Chinese monetary system. He was a banker who lived in China for 47 years, during which he both collected coins and served as a top advisor to the Ministry of Finance in China. He writes that "I had to leave China in a hurry" during the takeover by the Communists in 1949. The New York Times for May 23, 1971 reports: "The finest collection of Chinese coins - the collection of Eduard Kann, a banker who lived in China for 47 years. During his long numismatic career, Mr. Kann compiled the Catalog of Chinese Coins published in 1953." This book does not merely contain pictures of the coins and descriptions thereof. Included are biographies of the emperors, war lords, and sometimes even bureaucrats whose likenesses were depicted on these coins. Included are biographies of men whose identities have otherwise been lost to history. This book is must reading for coin collectors and students of the history of China. The massive original was one volume of 700 pages in length. This reprint divides the book into three volumes. The photographs and illustrations that are at the end of the book in the original have been moved up to be next to or close to the coins that are being described.

Chinese Money in Global Context: Historic Junctures Between 600 BCE and 2012 offers a groundbreaking interpretation of the Chinese monetary system, charting its evolution by examining key moments in history and placing them in international perspective. Expertly navigating primary sources in multiple languages and across three millennia, Niv Horesh explores the trajectory of Chinese currency from the birth of coinage to the current global financial crisis. His narrative highlights the way that Chinese money developed in relation to the currencies of other countries, paying special attention to the origins of paper money; the relationship between the West's ascendancy and its mineral riches; the linkages between pre-modern finance and political economy; and looking ahead to the possible globalization of the RMB, the currency of the People's Republic of China. This analysis casts new light on the legacy of China's financial system both retrospectively and at present—when China's global influence looms large.

The most striking feature of Wutong, the preeminent God of Wealth in late imperial China, was the deity’s diabolical character. Wutong was perceived not as a heroic figure or paragon but rather as an embodiment of greed and lust, a maleficent demon who preyed on the weak and vulnerable. In The Sinister Way, Richard von Glahn examines the emergence and evolution of the Wutong cult within the larger framework of the historical development of Chinese popular or vernacular religion—as opposed to institutional religions such as Buddhism or Daoism. Von Glahn’s study, spanning three millennia, gives due recognition to the morally ambivalent and demonic aspects of divine power within the common Chinese religious culture. Surveying Chinese religion from 1000 BCE to the beginning of the twentieth century, The Sinister Way views the Wutong cult as by no means an aberration. In Von Glahn’s work we see how, from earliest times, the Chinese imagined an enchanted world populated by fiendish fairies and goblins, ancient stones and trees that spring suddenly to life, ghosts of the unshriven dead, and the blood-eating spirits of the mountains and forests. From earliest times, too, we find in Chinese religious culture an abiding tension between two fundamental orientations: on one hand, belief in the power of sacrifice and exorcism to win blessings and avert calamity through direct appeal to a multitude of gods; on the other, faith in an all-encompassing moral equilibrium inhering in the cosmos.