Chinese Coins Meaning: Cash Coins, Coin Charms and Wealth

The round coin with a square hole is one of the most recognisable Chinese motifs. For more than two thousand years it was simply money; over the same centuries it also became an emblem of prosperity and good fortune, cast as charms, tied into ornaments and woven into decoration.

The round coin with a square hole

China's standard coinage took this form from the unification of China under the Qin dynasty in the third century BC, and it lasted into the twentieth century. The square hole allowed coins to be strung together in hundreds or thousands, which is why strings of coins became a picture of wealth. The shape is often explained as round heaven enclosing square earth, an explanation that reflects later cosmological ideas as much as the coin's practical origins.

Charm coins

Alongside real currency, Chinese workshops made coin-shaped charms that were never meant to be spent. They carried auspicious inscriptions and images, and were given as gifts, worn or hung in homes to express good wishes.

Coin-swords

Coins could also be tied together into the shape of a sword. The British Museum holds examples of these coin-swords, which were hung in homes as protective and auspicious objects in late imperial China.

Coins in auspicious imagery

Coins appear throughout Chinese decorative art, carried by figures such as the Daoist immortal Liu Hai, whose three-legged toad holds a string of them. Modern feng shui has added many rules about how many coins to use and where to place them; those rules are modern practice rather than ancient tradition.

Coins in jewellery

A coin motif references prosperity, the long history of Chinese money and the charm-coin tradition. See the AURYN Chinese coin charm, or read our guide to Chinese auspicious symbols.