Kangxi Tongbao
Qing dynasty coin
Kangxi Tongbao (traditional Chinese: 康熙通寶; simplified Chinese: 康熙通宝; pinyin: kāng xī tōng bǎo) refers to an inscription used on Chinese cash coins produced during the reign of the Kangxi Emperor of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty. Under the Kangxi Emperor the weights and standards of the brass cash coins changed several times and the bimetallic system of Qing dynasty coinage was established. Today Kangxi Tongbao cash coins are commonly used as charms and amulets where different forms of superstition have developed arounds its mint marks and calligraphy.
A notable characteristic is that the outer rim on Kangxi Tongbao cash coins on both sides of the coin tend to be quite wide, in contrast to that of the square center hole (方穿, fāng chuān). Apart from the two mints in the capital city of Beijing operated by the central government, many provincial mints operated intermittently.
Background
After the Manchus occupied Beijing in 1644, the government of the Qing dynasty began the production of the Shunzhi Tongbao (順治通寶) cash coins modeled after the Huichang Kaiyuan Tongbao cash coins (會昌開元通寶錢) of the Tang dynasty and the Dazhong Tongbao (大中通寶) and Hongwu Tongbao (洪武通寶) of the early Ming dynasty. Like these cash coins the Shunzhi Tongbao used mint marks in the form of a single Chinese character on the reverse side of the coin to indicate their origin. Other types of Shunzhi Tongbao were also cast creating a total of 5 different types. Under the Kangxi Emperor only two of these types were retained, one type had a Manchu characters on the left side of the reverse and a Chinese character on the right side of the reverse to indicate the mint of production and was used for provincial mints. The other type had the name of the mint in Manchu on the right side with the character "ᠪᠣᠣ" (Boo) on the left which were used for cash coins produced at the Ministry of Revenue and Ministry of Public Works.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Kangxi Tongbao” as qing dynasty coin. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as qing dynasty coin. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q30946994. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1644.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kangxi Tongbao” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.