Before we travel to a different place, one of the first things we do is to check up on the currencies of our destinations. Today, this can be done quickly with an app or on the internet; however, such information was not so readily available one hundred years ago. This was perhaps why postcards like the one above was produced. Th coins of the Kwang-Tung (Guangdong) province and Hu-Peh (Hubei) province of China were shown. It is interesting to see denominations such as tael, candareen (also spelt candarin), and mace which are no longer used for money today. These words were neither of Chinese nor English origin. They were originally used as weight measures, so the values meant the quantities of silver the coins contained. The origins of these words in the Hobson-Jobson (1886)1 glossary and their corresponding names in Chinese (romanization of characters is in Cantonese) are thus:
tael (兩 loeng2) < Malay tahil
mace (錢 cin4) < Malay mas, Dutch maes
candareen (分 fan1) < Malay kandūri
cash (厘 lei4) < Tamil kāsu, Portuguese caixa
In the late 19th century, 1 dollar (Chinese yuan) was equivalent to 7 mace 2 candareens, which was 0.72 tael. One tael was subdivided into 10 mace; one mace into 10 candareens; and one candareen into 10 cash. In other words, 1 tael equaled 1000 cash.
While tael was commonly circulated in the local markets, the postcard also mentioned Haikwan tael. Haikwan was a transliteration the Chinese word 海關, i.e., the Imperial Maritime Customs. Haikwan tael (海關兩) was the customs unit of tael designed as a uniform unit for the payment of customs duties. The flag printed at the bottom left of the postcard was the flag of the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company (輪船招商局), which was established in 1872 and founded by Li Hongzhang (李鴻章). The company was renamed China Merchants Group (招商局集團) in 1985 and its head office is in Hong Kong.
While serving as the British Consul in Ningpo, Robert Thom wrote a notice in 1844 reminding British merchants of the appointment of three shroff-shops for receiving duties from foreign merchants. The names of the shroff-shops were:
1st. The ( ) Kew-au shroff-shop, of which the responsible person is ( ) Yé-Kin-hung, in Government employ.
2nd. The ( ) Yuen-Ho shroff-shop, of which the responsible person is ( ) Chung-Kwang-Keen, having the literary title of a Sang-yuen.)
3rd. The ( ) Ken-ho shroff-shop, of which the responsible person is ( ) Ching-Suy-tan, in Government employ.
Thom gave the details of the duties as thus: “Duties will be received in pure Sycee silver 98 to 100 touch custom-house weight, with the addition of one tael two mace per hundred taels (1t.2m.p. 100 T.), expenses for remelting, as at Canton; or if the duties be paid in foreign money, the said foreign money will be put through the crucible, and taken for just so much pure silver as it yields, with the addition of 1t.2m.p.100 taels for remelting as above.”2
Sycee was silver or gold ingots of various shapes and sizes used in imperial China. As mentioned in the article “Shroff”, silver coins were often alloyed with copper or lead, therefore it was important to have a shroff, an expert on detecting spurious coins, to examine the coins and determine their values. In Robert Thom’s notice, a new term appeared – shroff-shop. This usage referred to an establishment or office, perhaps manned by a shroff, where payments were collected. This was probably the antecedent of “shroff office,” i.e., cashier office, which is still used in Hong Kong.
In trading ports like Canton, Shanghai, Hong Kong, etc., it was common to see foreign currencies circulating in local markets. The adoption of Malay weights in China was due to Portuguese trade domination in the Strait of Malacca where Malay was the lingua franca. Peso was the monetary unit of several former Spanish colonies in the Americas and the Philippines. Spanish conquistadors invaded the Aztecs of Mexico in 1512 in order to obtain precious metals like gold and silver. From the 17th to 18th century, the Galleon trade route was an important route connecting Spain with Asia via Mexico. Starting from Acapulco of Mexico, Spanish traders sailed to Manila where they bought Chinaware and other trade goods from the Chinese merchants. Since the Spanish traders paid in silver, there was a large influx of silver into China.
In the following dialogue taken from The Chinese and English Instructor 《英語集全》(1862), the transaction was completed in foreign currencies too.3
(C: customer; S: shopkeeper)
C: what time makee pay you send my billee my give you money
‘You send the bill to me in due time and I will pay you’
S: I thinkee you pay my Mexican dollar
‘Please pay me in Mexican dollars’
C: no, my pay you Englishee money
‘No, I will pay you in Sterling money’
S: I losee too muchee discount
‘I lose too much by the discount’
C: so fashion my pay you one half Mexican dollar
‘Well I will pay you one half in Mexican dollars’
one half Englishee money
‘And one half in Sterling’
Mexican silver dollar was called 鷹銀 (literally ‘eagle silver’) in Chinese because there was an image of an eagle on one side of the coin. This coin was issued after the independence of Mexico in 1810 and was one of the popular currencies in China. The “Englishee money” was called 紅毛銀 (literally ‘red-haired silver’). Initially referring to the Dutch, the term 紅毛 (hung4 mou4 ‘red-haired people’) was also applied to the English.
As for the features of pidgin English, this dialogue demonstrated how the forms of personal pronouns were simplified. Take first-person pronouns as an example. An identical form my was used for multiple functions – subject pronoun as in my give you money; object pronoun as in I thinkee you pay my Mexican dollar, and possessive adjective you send my billee. The case was similar for the second- and third-person and the forms being chosen were you and he. While standard English uses distinct forms for these functions, the reduction in the forms of pronouns resembled Cantonese, which contribute significantly to the grammar of the pidgin. In Cantonese, the three persons are represented by ngo5 我 ‘I, me, my,’ nei5 你 ‘you, your,’ and keoi5 佢 ‘(s)he, him/her, his/her). Occasionally, I was also attested. So fashion often appeared at the beginning of a sentence and could mean ‘in this/that way.’
While tael, mace, and candareen were no longer used as denominations of currency. In Hong Kong, weight measurement employs a mixture of different systems – metric units, Imperial units, and Chinese units – for different types of goods. For example, vegetables, meat, gold, Chinese herbal medicine, etc. continues to use these Malay terms as units of weight.
1 Yule, Henry and Arthur Coke Burnell. 1886. Hobson-Jobson Being a Glossary of Anglo-Indian Colloquial Words and Phrases and of Kindred Terms. London: John Murray.
2 Accounts and Papers: Thirty-seven Volumes. 7. China. Session 19 January – 23 July 1847. Vol. XL. 1847. “Orders, Ordinances, Rules, and Regulations Concerning the Trade in China. Presented to the House of Commons in pursuance of their Order of January 26, 1847. London: T. R. Harrison.
3 Tong, Ting Kü (唐廷樞). 1862. The Chinese and English Instructor 《英語集全》. Canton.