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User:Donald Trung/Letters to Chinese Money Matters

< User:Donald Trung

Chinese Money Matters is a website operated by curators of the British Museum East Asian Money department, as this website hosts numerous articles on the Chinese monetary history as well as other East Asian and South-East Asian monetary history I have used it several times as a reference while writing ✍🏻 Wikipedia articles. Their mission statement is "There is a wealth of information about East Asian numismatics out there, and a great deal of expertise. But it is scattered across the world, across disciplines and across languages. So, the aim of this website is to try to bring resources together in one place." coincidentally this is also my exact mission on Wikimedia projects. As I have been busy collecting images of Oriental cash coins as I have considered being “finished” writing about most of them since 2017 I have begun to try and contact as many big names in the world of numismatics as possible, however as these people come from a certain “authority” they could be more convincing in persuading others to share their knowledge of Oriental cash coins with the world 🗺. As this website is run by multiple people I have not specifically addressed my letter to Helen Wang or any other individual personally but to the organisation themselves.

Trying to build a freely accessible library on Chinese money on Wikipedia (19 D. 05 M. 2018 A.)

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“Dear reader,

I am a volunteer contributor to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, I mostly write about East and South-East Asian numismatics and have collected a great deal of images of coins and banknotes related to it to Wikimedia Commons. As I had recently written a rather large article attempting to categorise and name every Chinese numismatic charm on Wikipedia I found that the number of images of Chinese charms on Wikimedia Commons to be less than stellar, further the images of cash coins from some dynasties remain to be found, if the people behind Chinese Money Matters are willing to help not only index every possible cash coin (which I did in 2017) but also help upload images of every one to help illustrate these articles better I would be more than grateful. If any of y'all want me to e-mail a couple of examples with missing images like the article “Southern Song dynasty coinage” or others feel free to ask. I want to make Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons a complete library for anyone interested in Asian numismatics, with Wikipedia I have largely done that (as it now only misses a few minor details here and there), but unfortunately most collectors of Chinese currency don’t upload their images of Chinese currency to Wikimedia Commons which is a shame as Wikipedia is usually the first place people to go to educate themselves on a subject or simply discover a subject by coincidence.

If anyone is interested in helping place all information on Chinese and neighbouring coins in one place then please respond.

Yours faithfully,
Trung Quoc Don (徵國單)”

RE: [Chinese Money Matters] Contact (24 D. 05 M. 2018 A.)

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"Dear M(r)s, Wang,

Well you could become the British Museum’s “Wikipedian in residence”, as the British Museum hosts a rather large amount of Chinese and other Asian coins and charms you could simply ask permission to scan them and upload them to Wikimedia Commons, if you’re interested I will ping you on your talk page and make sure that all images will be added to the correct categories. I m busy now mapping all Chinese numismatic charms, I already wrote about every category, now I just need to list all the hidden symbolism and Mandarin Chinese homophonic puns and then I’m done with Chinese numismatic charms on Wikipedia, after that I'll write about the Kan’ei Tsuuhou and then the Kaiyuan Tongbao. David Hartill donated all of the information from his world renowned book on Cast Chinese Coins from all Chinese coinages up until the Northern Song Dynasty, I filled in everything from the Southern Song Dynasty until the Republican era.

Donating scans from the British Museum to Wikimedia Commons won't just help the readers of Wikipedia, any image on Wikimedia Commons may be used by anyone so if someone like David Hartill or anyone else from the Royal Numismatic Society or really just anyone wanting to write a book or article on Chinese and other East Asian & Vietnamese numismatics they could use your images, all they would have to do is credit you as its source.

The beauty of Wikimedia projects is that while information on East Asian numismatics is scattered in different books and on different websites and place them all in one place, just look at this article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_dynasty_coinage

The information and history came from David Hartill’s Cast Chinese Coins, the list of Chinese mint marks from Gary Ashkenazy's Primaltrek / Primal Trek website, and the list of Manchu mint mark from Ulrich Theobald’s Chinaknowledge.de online encyclopedia on the history of China. The mission you and your colleagues set out to try to achieve with Chinese Money Matters could be achieved here.

If you ever feel like you want to help by uploading images of coins and charms then feel free to ask my help.

Yours faithfully,
Trung Quoc Don

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

Consulted method of communication

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Contact.

Original publication 📤

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Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 11:55, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

See also

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