Brick Tea Money.

 

It may come as somewhat as a surprise to Western collectors, but for quite some time tea was the preferred medium of exchange in some places, particularly “Inner Asia” – which is to say western China, Mongolia and the former republics in far south-eastern Russia.

For centuries, tea had been a barter item but usually in the form of bags of them. It was with the arrival of screwpresses circa 1800 that the true “tea bricks” appeared – and they continued to be used in some of the more outlying areas until well into the 20 th Century.

Each area evolved a “standard” and there were many different designs and shapes but that shown below, believed to date from about 1860, is a “typical” example, if there are any. This one measures 7½ inches wide by 9 inches high by 1 inch thick and weighs about 4½ pounds. The Chinese at lower obverse is almost certainly the name of the company who produced it as well as a guarantee as to its quality and weight.

 

 

While there were bricks that were narrower and thicker (somewhat like our building bricks), they weren't as popular as the wider, thinner ones. Thick bricks made it too easy to add adulterants in the center undetected. That above allowed the receiver to determine at a glance that it was made of properly fermented leaves with little chance of junk being hidden. The brick shown (now in the A.N.A. Museum as one of the finest examples known), is also typical in that the reverse has been pressed with incused lines that allows it to be divided into halves, quarters, eighths and sixteenths for use as “small change” or a beverage, the ultimate fate of nearly all such bricks. At the source, they were produced in forms by loading them with a standard weight of loose tea which was then pressed in a screwpress. Dried afterward, they became hard enough to withstand considerable handling.

During the 19 th Century, the Chinese paid their Mongol troops with tea bricks. In the 1870s, at Urga, a sheep was worth twelve to fifteen bricks, a camel from 120 to 150 and a Chinese pipe, two to five. Despite their weight, it is on record that buyers might arrive at the market with sacksful or cartloads of bricks – and at least one house (in Kiakt) was purchased with them.

Gradually, the use of tea bricks as currency was superceded by silver in the form of Chinese sycee ingots or Chinese coin. Bricks continued to be stocked in stores for years thereafter but only as a commodity in convenient form.

Wayne Jacobs is a numismatic expert. Currently secretary and editor of the "Mid-Island Coin Club Numismatic Journal"of Nanaimo, Vancouver Island , British Columbia, he is the award winning author of numerous articles. The MICC journal are hosted here: MICC webpages Copyright 2006 Wayne Jacobs. This article may be reprinted freely for non commercial purpose only if the resource box is left intact, linking back to us.