Coin designs influenced by Chinese "cash"

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Cash is a cast coin with a square hole in the middle. It was the dominant style of coin design in China since the Qin Dynasty, and later were spread to neighbouring countries like Vietnam, Korea and Japan.


The square hole in a round coin symbolises a square earth in a spherical universe, and hence my username. But in practical sense, the square hole makes it easier to fix a batch of coins to a square wooden stick when they are filed and polished. 

Since late 19th century, Asian countries gradually switched to western machinary mints, and since western coins were struck rather than cast, the square hole was made obsolete.

But coins designs are continued to be influenced by "cash" type coins, for a public who were accustomed to it, or to give it a Chinese style.

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1863 Hong Kong one Mil.
It was shaped like a Chinese Cash coin, even though the hole was round, not square.

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Polish 2008 Olympics commemorative coin, 10 Złoti.

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The center part of the obverse side of Chinese silver dragons still pretends to be a coin, with manchu texts taking place of the square hole, and the the it's still bears the text "guang xu tong bao" revolving around the center, just like its cash counterpart.



There are other replacements for the square hole, like a flower:

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It's not a coin, but a very nice Czech medal for the Beijing Olympics...

They used their own lion for the center device

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Japanese Prefectural Coins have a common obverse side. The "coin" in the middle bears the words "regional autonomy"

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French 1 Centime, Indochina 1921