Fish Culture The Fish Culture in Coins

This is a hollow one with a diameter of 4.5cm and a dark bronze color. The pattern consists of two people and a fish: one is wearing tights, and the other is wearing a long-sleeved shirt and gown. They strode forward, raised their arms, one at the fish head and the other at the fish tail, dancing beautifully. The atlas of China Spending Money, published by Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, is called "People spend money to lie on a fishing line". According to the bronze, black paint, rust color, dance posture and the whole "breath" of the dancer's costume, it is inferred that the coins belong to the Han and Wei Dynasties (but it is not excluded that they were copied later) in the Guide to Collecting Money in China compiled by Mr. Dong Dayong, a numismatic scholar. Mr. Dong named the money "Two Fish". Mr. Dong thinks that this coin painting uses surreal romanticism. Because in fact, it was difficult for folk fishing tools at that time to catch such a big fish, and even if they did, it was impossible to dance on live fish. It shows the extraordinary imagination of our folk artists two thousand years ago. This bold and novel idea is no different from the exaggeration of the bronze galloping horse "riding on a swallow" unearthed in Leitai, Wuwei, Gansu Province. One is in the sky and the other is in the water, which can be said to have the same effect. The plastic arts of painting in Han Dynasty inherited the beautiful and mysterious magic color of Chu Ci, and often used imagination and exaggeration. This money can be said to be strong physical evidence. There are colorful patterns about fish in Spending Money, as shown in the picture album: "People spend money with fish patterns" (some scholars also call it "fish money"), in which a woman holds a knife to make it look like a fish. Tang Meng's poems say, "Beauty is better than gold (refers to the wrong goldfish knife), and her hands are red and fresh" (red carp)], "Spend money to carve Pisces", "Spend money to carve three fish", "Spend money to carve double dragons on the back of Pisces" and "Spend money to carve arowana" and so on. Among them, most of them spend money by hollowing out. Fish has always been regarded as a mascot in ancient China. The money spent on this two-person fish carving further shows that Ming fish, as a mascot, has been widely used in coin patterns during the Han and Wei Dynasties. According to Guo Ruoyu's book Appreciation of Ancient Lucky Money Images, there are four fish-shaped coins in the "five baht" money in the Western Han Dynasty, as well as the "Pinquan" cast by Xin Mang, and the word "Spring" is fish-shaped. It can be seen that the "fish" pattern in auspicious money appeared early.