at is more than usually bewildering.
Let me explain, in a few sentences, the "cash" currency of the Middle
Kingdom. The current coin of China as everyone knows is the brass cash,
which is perforated so that it may be carried on a string. Now,
theoretically, a "string of cash" contains 100 coins, and in the Eastern
provinces ten strings are the theoretical equivalent of one Mexican
dollar. But there are eighteen provinces in China, and the number of
brass cash passing for a string varies in each province from the full
100, which I have never seen, to 83 in Taiyuen, and down to 33 in the
Eastern part of the province of Chihli. In Peking I found the system
charmingly simple. One thousand cash are there represented by 100 coins,
whereas 1000 "old cash" consist of 1000 coins, though 1000 "capital
cash" are only 500 coins. The big cash are marked as 10 capital cash,
but count the same as 5 old cash. Nowhere does a Chinaman mean 1000 cash
when he speaks of 1000 cash. In Tientsin 1000 cash means 500 cash--that
is to say 5 times 100 cash, the 100 there being any number you can pass
except 100, though by agreement the 100 is usually estimated at 98. In
Nanking I found a different system to prevail. There cash are 1075 the
1000, but of the 10 strings of 100 cash, 7 contain only 98 cash each,
and 3 only 95, yet the surplus 75 cash--that is to say the number which
for the time being is the Nanking equivalent of 75--are added all the
same. At Lanchow in Chihli on the Imperial Chinese Railway near
Shanhai-kwan, 16 old cash count as 100 cash, yet 33 are required to make
up 200; in Tientsin from which point the railway starts, 1000 cash are
really 500 cash and 98 count there as 100. Now 2000 Chihli cash are
represented by 325 coins, and 1000 by 162 coins, and 6000 by 975 coins,
which again count as 1000 large cash and equal on an average one Mexican
dollar. Therefore to convert Lanchow cash into Tientsin cash you must
divide the Lanchow cash by 3, count 975 as 1000, and consider this equal
to a certain percentage of a theoretical amount of silver known as a
tael, which is always varying of itself as well as by the fluctuations
in the market value of silver, and which is not alike in any two places,
and may widely vary in different portions of the same place.

Could anything be simpler? And yet there are those who say that the
system of money exchange in China is both cumbrous and exasperating.
Take as a further instance the cash in Yunna