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==Silver==
==Silver==
[[File:Sycee.JPG|right|thumb|320px|A 50-tael sycee, c. 1851-1861, on display at the British Museum]]
Silver was typically carried in one-ounce ingots known as [[tael]]s, or ''liǎng'' in Chinese, which were not officially minted, and which were valued by weight, and not by fiat or nominal value. Though these were not standardized across the realm, and indeed the standard weights themselves were not standard from place to place, only certain shapes or forms for the ingots were widely produced or accepted. One of the most common was an ingot of 50 ''liǎng'', sometimes known by Europeans as the "shoe of sycee," for its shape which somewhat resembled a shoe (or perhaps a boat, or hat). This term derives from the Chinese ''xìsī'' (細絲, Cantonese: ''saisi''), literally meaning "fine silk," but used to refer to these shoe-shaped ingots. Though other shapes and forms circulated within China, ingots minted abroad were typically not used in their current state, but were instead melted down and re-formed into more typical Chinese forms by private Chinese money handlers, who would then imprint onto the ingot its weight and purity.
Silver was typically carried in one-ounce ingots known as [[tael]]s, or ''liǎng'' in Chinese, which were not officially minted, and which were valued by weight, and not by fiat or nominal value. Though these were not standardized across the realm, and indeed the standard weights themselves were not standard from place to place, only certain shapes or forms for the ingots were widely produced or accepted. One of the most common was an ingot of 50 ''liǎng'', sometimes known by Europeans as the "shoe of sycee," for its shape which somewhat resembled a shoe (or perhaps a boat, or hat). This term derives from the Chinese ''xìsī'' (細絲, Cantonese: ''saisi''), literally meaning "fine silk," but used to refer to these shoe-shaped ingots. Though other shapes and forms circulated within China, ingots minted abroad were typically not used in their current state, but were instead melted down and re-formed into more typical Chinese forms by private Chinese money handlers, who would then imprint onto the ingot its weight and purity.