Sycee

'primary treasure') was a type of gold and silver ingot currency used in imperial China from its founding under the Qin dynasty until the fall of the Qing in the 20th century.

Sycee were not made by a central bank or mint but by individual goldsmiths or silversmiths for local exchange; consequently, the shape and amount of extra detail on each ingot were highly variable.

Paper imitations of gold- or silver-colored sycees are burned along with hell money as a part of Chinese ancestral veneration for Tomb Sweeping Day and the Ghost Festival.

Under China's Tang dynasty, coins were inscribed Kaiyuan tongbao (開元通寶, "Circulating Treasure of the Beginning of an Era"),[5][6] later abbreviated to yuanbao.

However, due to monetary problems such as enormous local variations in monetary supply and exchange rates, rapid changes in the relative value of silver and copper, coin fraud, inflation, and political uncertainty with changing regimes, until the time of the Republic payment by weight of silver was the standard practice, and merchants carried their own scales with them.

When foreign silver coins began to circulate in China in the later 16th century, they were initially considered a type of "quasi-sycee" and imprinted with seals just as sycees were.