Shanghai tael
Shanghai tael: a historical unit of account.
- Dates in use
- Introduction uncertain; ended 1933
- Ancestry branch
- See family connections
Where this money came from
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Earlier ancestry is not established here.
The story
Shanghai business used its local tael as a monetary unit; existing obligations were expressed in taels and required a yuan conversion rule. [1]
Shanghai tael-based payments and contracts were replaced by Republic of China yuan accounting. Shanghai local absorption only; yuan already existed; do not infer all local taels abolished simultaneously. [2]
Shanghai banks, exchanges and businesses discontinued tael valuation in favour of yuan following the central order. [3]
Turning points
Account-unit observation
Chinese and Western merchants adopted Shanghai’s abstract tael money of account in 1857. This reported adoption is not a universal origin date for all Shanghai silver references. [4]
Sources and evidence
- United States Department of Commerce · Monetary Use of Silver in 1933 C1384 ↗
- United States Department of Commerce · Monetary Use of Silver in 1933; Bank of China · Bank of China, The Choice for Silver Dollar in the Currency Reform 1932–1933 C1421 ↗
- United States Department of Commerce · Monetary Use of Silver in 1933; Bank of China · Bank of China, The Choice for Silver Dollar in the Currency Reform 1932–1933 C1433 ↗
- Richard von Glahn · The Changing Significance of Latin American Silver in the Chinese Economy, 16th–19th Centuries, RHE 38/3 (2020), 553–585 C2007 ↗
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Cite this page
“Shanghai tael.” The Family Tree of Money. © Field Technologies, Inc. Reader edition 2026-10-13; research dataset v44. https://familytreeofmoney.org/currency/CUR-V26-SHANGHAI-TAEL.html