The Infamous Counterfeiting Case of Tongzi District, Guizhou Province, 1794

CHAPTER 7 Smoke on the Mountain: The Infamous Counterfeiting Case of Tongzi District, Guizhou Province, 1794

Cao Jin and Hans Ulrich Vogel

Introduction: A First Glance at the “Old Crow’s Nest”

On 30 August 1794, Fukang’an 福康安 (1753–1796), Governor-general of Sichuan, informed the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736–1795) in a memorial that a large counterfeiting enterprise had been uncovered in the border region of Guizhou and Sichuan. Apparently the site of the crime was called “Old Crow’s Nest” (Laoyawo 老鴉窩) and the scale of the bandits’ operation was increasing day by day. They had already built dozens of furnaces and shacks and, to some extent, were armed to be prepared for all eventualities. The leaders were said to ride proudly on horseback, to assemble gamblers and to commit all kinds of evil deeds, which could only be described as unscrupulous and shameless.1

* Centred on this case study a textbook on Qing documentary Chinese for students and others interested in Chinese history has been authored by Cao Jin, Sabine Kink and Hans Ulrich Vogel. It contains a great variety of primary sources of different genres and provides detailed information on the case. The book is entitled Die Falschmünzerbande vom Alten Rabenhorst (1794) in Texten und Kontexten: Ein Lehrbuch zur chinesischen Dokumentensprache der Qing- Zeit and will be published in 2015. Apart from the presentation of a first draft of this paper during the Third International Workshop of the DFG Research Group “Monies, Markets, and Finance in China and East Asia, 1600–1900”, 1–3 October 2008, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Centre of Asian and Oriental Studies, Department of Chinese and Korean Studies, a revised version was presented to the workshop “Coin of the Realm: Money and Meaning in Late Imperial China”, 18 April 2014, sponsored by the Mahindra Humanities Center, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Asia Center, and the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. We would like to thank Ariel Fox and Michael Puett for their kind invitation as well as to the workshop participants, especially Peter K. Bol, for their helpful comments. Moreover, we would like to express our gratitude to Brian and Jane Kate Leonard from the University of Akron for editorial assistance and to Alexander Jost for his support in mapmaking. 1 Gongzhongdang zhupi zouzhe, caizhenglei 宮中檔硃批奏摺，財政類, Beijing: First His torical Archives of China, 1344–022, Sichuan, Fukang’an, ql 59/8/6.

By the time this memorial was written, a vanguard of government troops led by local and regional officials from Sichuan was already on its way to the site, but Fukang’an also dispatched additional troops from Chengdu and sum- moned the Guizhou authorities to support the military action from their side. When the soldiers reached the place, they encountered some resistance from a group of the counterfeiters, but after a short fight that even involved artil- lery fire, the soldiers eventually prevailed. More than three hundred bandits were successively caught, their shacks and furnaces were destroyed, more than 293,000 pieces of counterfeit cash and 6,700 jin (ca. 4 tons) of damaged small cash (posui xiaoqian 破碎小錢) were confiscated, together with minting equipment, such as coin matrixes, sand moulds and crucibles, as well as broad- swords, lances, wooden sticks and horses.2 This was the largest known counterfeiting case of the Qing period. It had lasted for at least ten months, and its suppression involved more than fifty officials from three provinces (Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan). Moreover, it evoked intense interest from the emperor and ultimately caused discussions about, and reforms of, China’s monetary policy.

Background: Southwest China, a Hotbed of “Small Cash”

Exchange Rate between Monetary Silver and Cash Coins A key point towards a closer understanding of the events in and around the “Old Crow’s Nest” in 1794 is the phenomenon of so-called small cash, which had become omnipresent in many parts of Southwest China during this time. According to the definition by Frank H.H. King, the term “small cash” (xiao qian 小錢) and its antonym “big cash” (daqian 大錢) are used to describe the relative size of coins. While daqian might then be understood as “standard cash”, or “good cash”, or “current cash coins passing at par”, xiaoqian should be translated as “counterfeit cash”, “privately minted cash”, “spurious cash”,3 or “inferior cash”. If we compare small cash to standard cash, the former is of an inferior appearance, which could include such characteristics as having a smaller diameter or a larger hole, being thinner or made of a cheaper alloy with a lower copper content and often reflecting a lower level of casting tech- nique. Coins of earlier dynasties or reign-periods and other countries, such as

2 Gongzhongdang zhupi zouzhe, 1345–020, Sichuan, Fukang’an, ql 59/10/3. 3 Frank H.H. King, Money and Monetary Policy in China, 1845–1895 (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1965), p. 245.