Mace

A mace (Chinese: 錢; pinyin: qián; Cantonese Yale: chìhn; Hong Kong English usage also: tsin^[1]) is a traditional Chinese measurement of weight in East Asia that was also used as a currency denomination. It is equal to 10 candareens and is 1/10 of a tael or approximately 3.78 grams. A troy candareen is approximately 3.74 grams. In Hong Kong, one mace is 3.779936375 gramme.^[1] and in Ordinance 22 of 1884, it is ²⁄₁₅ oz. avoir.

In imperial China, 10 candareens equaled 1 mace which was 1/10 of a tael and, like the other units, was used in weight-denominated silver currency system. A common denomination was 7 mace and 2 candareens, equal to one silver Chinese yuan.

Name

Like other similar measures such as tael and catty, the English word "mace" derives from Malay, in this case through Dutch maes, plural masen, from Malay mas which, in turn , derived from Sanskrit māṣa, a word related to "mash," another name for the urad bean, and masha, a traditional Indian unit of weight equal to 0.97 gram.^[2] This word is unrelated to other uses of mace in English.

The Chinese word for mace is qián (錢), which is also a generic word for "money" in Mandarin Chinese. (The same Chinese character (kanji) was used for the Japanese sen, the former unit equal to ¹⁄₁₀₀ of a Japanese yen and for the Vietnamese tiền, a currency used in late imperial Vietnam, although neither of these is ever known as "mace" in English.)

References

See also

• Chinese units of measurement
• Economy of the People's Republic of China
• Economic history of China (Pre-1911)
• Economic history of Modern China

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