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Money for Burning
| Article
# : |
16773 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1989 |
3,717 Words |
| Author
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Peter Schoppert
Peter Schoppert is a free-lance writer residing in Singapore. |
Paper was first used for money because paper could burn. When the earliest paper money was printed in China sometime around the eight century, it was developed as an imitation of metallic currency in order to be burnt at funerals and thereby transfer the wealth of one life to another.
Not too long after paper money began to be used at funerals, the Chinese began to accept printed-paper as a valid medium and exchange and legal tender in the Middle Kingdom. The issuance of standard forms of paper money became a state monopoly in the late eleventh century, and the fall of the Sung dynasty to northern barbarians soon afterwards as exacerbated by a new type of crisis of confidence in the government: runaway inflation.
Kublai Khan and the Mongols perfected the system the Sung Chinese had started. Marco Polo was so struck by the widespread use of paper money in Mongol-ruled China that he began his descriptions of Chinese cities with the following formula: "The people are idolaters and subjects of the Great Khan, and have paper money." Meanwhile, techniques of printing that made massive issues of paper money possible were slowly spreading westward along the Silk Road through central Asia, Persia, and the Middle East.
Paper money has had a long and glorious history as a popular medium of exchange. But new technology may lead to a change in the way we buy, sell, borrow, and steal. In Singapore, a dynamic Asian city-state, the use of paper money is slowly but steadily losing ground. Singapore has one of the world's mot advanced systems of electronic funds transfer, and the Singapore one-dollar note is being phased out this year because it is
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