Tael

Early English forms of the name such as "tay" or "taes" derive from the Portuguese plural of tael, taeis.

The most common government measure was the Kuping (庫平; kùpíng; 'treasury standard') tael, weighing 37.5 grams (1.21 ozt).

A common commercial weight, the Caoping (漕平; cáopíng; 'canal shipping standard') tael weighed 36.7 grams (1.18 ozt) of marginally less pure silver.

As in China, other parts of East Asia such as Japan and Korea have also used the tael (Japanese: 両; rōmaji: ryō; Korean: 량/냥 (兩); romaja: nyang/ryang) as both a unit of weight and, by extension, a currency.

Traditional Chinese silver sycees and other currencies of fine metals were not denominated or made by a central mint and their value was determined by their weight in taels.

Before the year 1840 the government of the Qing dynasty had set the official exchange rate between silver sycees and copper-alloy cash coins was set at 1,000 wén for 1 tael of silver before 1820, but after the year 1840 this official exchange rate was double to 2,000 wén to 1 tael.

[8] Because these changes were implemented during the height of the Taiping Rebellion, the Western powers had managed to take over the complete administration of the Qing's maritime customs from the imperial Chinese governmental bureaucracy.

[8] The Haikwan tael unit was completely uniform, it was very carefully defined, and its creation had been negotiated among the various colonial powers and the government of the Qing dynasty.

[citation needed] As of February 2024[update] the price of silver is about 254 yuan RMB/tael of 50 g. The tael is still in use as a weight measurement in a number of countries though usually only in limited contexts.

In English-speaking countries, measurement scales that support Tael as a unit will typically abbreviate it as "tl".

In French Indochina, the colonial administration fixed the tael (lạng) as 100 g, which is commonly used at food markets where many items typically weigh in the 100–900 g range.

Real estate prices are often quoted in taels of gold rather than the local currency over concerns over monetary inflation.