OFFICIAL USE
DONGJING MENG HUA LU / 卷三
都市錢陌
One “hundred” is not always one hundred.
Meng records six money-count conventions in one sentence. The crucial distinction is between a nominal hundred and the physical number of cash coins counted for a transaction.
OPEN THE SYSTEM ↓百NOMINAL 100陌COUNTING用CONTEXT
01 / COUNTING CONVENTIONS
The category changes the count.
Each figure below is an actual count reported by Meng against a nominal hundred-money convention.
STREET-MARKET COMMON USE
FISH / MEAT / VEGETABLES
GOLD / SILVER
VALUABLES / FEMALE SERVANTS / INSECTS
WRITTEN-DOCUMENT TRANSACTIONS
02 / WHAT IS 陌?
The account unit and the physical count can separate.
Traditional lexicographic and monetary-history sources describe 省陌／短陌 as practices in which fewer than one hundred coins could be treated as a nominal hundred.
HISTORICAL FRAME足陌 = full hundred
省陌 / 短陌 = shortened physical count
省陌 / 短陌 = shortened physical count
The Ministry of Education's revised dictionary cites Ouyang Xiu for the convention of seventy-seven as a hundred. Gu Yanwu's later historical note likewise records a Taiping Xingguo order standardizing seventy-seven as a hundred while acknowledging local variation.
1. Meng gives the system in a single compressed sentence.
都市錢陌，官用七十七，街市通用七十五，魚肉菜七十二陌，金銀七十四，珠珍、雇婢妮、買蟲蟻六十八，文字五十六陌，行市各有長短使用。
WORKING TRANSLATION
For money counting in the capital, Meng gives different actual counts by context: official use 77, common street-market use 75, fish/meat/vegetables 72, gold and silver 74, pearls and other valuables together with hiring female servants and buying insects 68, and written-document transactions 56. He closes by saying trades use conventions of different lengths.
GALOK READING
The source preserves a plural system. A written hundred does not force one universal physical count across the market. The transaction category matters.
Short counting had a history before Meng recorded Kaifeng.
Later historical compilations connect the 77-count convention with late Five Dynasties and early Song fiscal practice. Scholarship also traces “short strings” further back into Tang regulation and earlier precedents.
The MOE dictionary defines a full hundred as 足陌 and fewer than one hundred still used as a hundred as 省陌, citing Ouyang Xiu's 77-count description.
MOE dictionary ↗Gu Yanwu's Rizhilu records an early-Song order for 77 as 100 and also notes that local practice could vary sharply.
Chinese Text Project / Rizhilu ↗Tang sources show governments trying to regulate under-counted strings before the Song. This places Meng's list inside a much longer monetary practice.
Old Tang Book / CText ↗04 / MATERIAL WITNESS
A Northern Song cash coin makes the physical side visible.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a copper-alloy 崇寧通寶 dated 1102–06, within Emperor Huizong's reign and close to the urban world Meng remembered. Its square-holed cast form belongs to the physical cash behind these counting conventions.
One museum coin cannot demonstrate a 77-, 75- or 56-coin string. The object establishes material form and period; the counting system comes from textual evidence.
OBJECTCopper-alloy cash coinDATE1102–06 / Northern SongLIMITDoes not encode a short-string count
The numbers are secure; a single cause is harder to prove.
Research on short strings discusses state regulation, market custom, currency conditions and transaction costs. Meng's sentence itself gives categories and counts, then says markets use different lengths. It does not supply a causal theory.
Variation by transaction
Official use, street trade, food, precious metals, selected high-value or service transactions and written-document transactions carry different counts.
Why did short strings persist?
Modern scholarship debates fiscal rules, market convention, money supply and transaction frictions. Those explanations can frame the problem; the page keeps them separate from Meng's own words.
Tsing Hua Journal / monetary-history discussion ↗Losing the Way in the City / Song monetary context ↗
Small graphs matter.
COMMON買蟲蟻
↔SIKU FAMILY買䖝蟻
ENDING行市各有長短使用
→METHODKEEP COUNTS CONTEXTUAL
PEOPLE ARE MATCHED.
Entry 24 follows another intermediary system: finding workers through occupational middlemen.