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01 / 05
Lesson Plan: Hangzhou (Paper Money)

Blog Post | Human Development

Lesson Plan: Hangzhou (Paper Money)

In this lesson, students will learn about a commercial innovation that originated in China and has now spread all over the world: paper currency.

Sean Kinnard —

You can find a PDF of this lesson plan here.

Lesson Overview

Featured article: Centers Progress, Pt. 12: Hangzhou (Paper Money) by Chelsea Follett

Despite China having the second biggest economy in the world and being the nation with the world’s largest population today, many students know surprisingly little about the country’s history. Even students that know a bit about China have probably never heard of the city of Hangzhou, one of the ancient capitals of China and now its fourth-largest metropolitan area with a population of over 20 million.

This article will give students a glimpse into the fascinating history of Hangzhou during its “golden age” and relates many of the innovations that made the city one of the most influential centers of progress in world history. In particular, students will learn about one commercial innovation that originated in China and has now spread all over the world: paper currency.

Warm-up

Imagine that paper money, electronic payments, and credit and debit cards disappeared tomorrow. In this alternate reality, the only way to pay for things would be by using small metal coins.

How would this change affect you, your family, and your friends?

  • Take a few minutes to reflect on how life would be different if you could use only coins to make purchases.
    • How would you feel? Do you think the transition would be easy?
    • Do you think using only coins to pay for things would be an impossible task? What would be the biggest challenges for you and your family?
    • Would there be any advantages to this old style of payment?
  • Write a paragraph describing how this change would affect your life.
  • Share your paragraph with a partner. Reflect and discuss together:
    • In what ways would you and your community be worse off with only the use of coins?
    • Would you want to live this way for a day, a month, or even a year?
    • Do you think it is possible or desirable for your town or city to flourish without the use of paper money?
  • Today you will learn about the origin of paper money in China. Before we begin, answer these questions:
    • Why do you think paper money was invented in the first place? What were the advantages of paper money over the types of money used previously?
    • What technology do you think had to be developed in order for paper money to be introduced?
    • Make a prediction: Do you think paper money originated with a central government or as an innovation of private businesspeople?

Questions for reading, writing, and discussion

Read the article, and then answer the following questions:

  • What were some of the characteristics of the economy of Hangzhou during the Song dynasty? List at least three.
  • The article mentions two advantages of using paper currency over coins. What were these advantages?
  • What role does Hangzhou play in the economic life of China today? Why is it still one of the most important cities in China?
  • According to the article, at what point did Hangzhou become the most important city in China?
  • What critical piece of infrastructure first built during the 600s CE allowed Hangzhou to be connected to the cities of northern China?
  • What technological innovation allowed for the mass production of books, documents, and banknotes during the Song dynasty? Be specific. What was the critical invention devised by Bi Sheng?
  • Despite Hangzhou being forward-thinking in many respects, what notable practice now seen as inhumane and cruel towards a particular group arose during the Song Dynasty?
  • What were some of the cultural milestones of the Song dynasty in each area of achievement? How did these innovations improve the lives of many ordinary Chinese people living in cities like Hangzhou? Fill in the chart below.
What were the achievements during the Song dynasty?How were the lives of ordinary Chinese people improved as a result?
Culture (including clothing, literature and poetry, cuisine, and architecture)
Technology
Economics
  • How did paper currency evolve? Write a short description of its origin and development from the Tang dynasty through the Song dynasty.
  • What were some of the features of the banknotes printed by the Chinese central government in Hangzhou beginning in 1265 CE? Why did the Chinese people ascribe value to this form of currency?
  • If not managed correctly, what is one of the dangers of using paper currency in an economy? What are the consequences for ordinary people of this type of fiscal mismanagement?

Extension Activity/Homework

Watch and Learn from a China Scholar

Dr. Valerie Hansen teaches Chinese history at Yale University. She is a well-known expert on one of the most famous Chinese paintings, a masterpiece known as the “Qing Ming Scroll,” which was commissioned by a Song dynasty emperor. Although the cityscape depicted in the scroll is a fictional rendition of an “ideal” Chinese urban area during the Song dynasty, it provides extensive evidence of the technological sophistication and economic innovations that were present in Hangzhou at the time. Watch the video of Dr. Hansen describing the entire scroll in detail. As you watch, find specific evidence in the scroll that exemplifies Chinese society during the Song dynasty.

Examples in the Qingming Scroll
Social organization
Politics and governance
Interactions with the environment
Cultural developments
Economic systems
Technology

Create a Virtual Tour of Hangzhou

Imagine that you are a tour operator in the modern city of Hangzhou. Your job is to promote your area to foreign visitors. Create a virtual tour of modern Hangzhou city using Google Presentation or PowerPoint and present it to your potential clients. What types of places would you like to show visitors to the city? How would you make Hangzhou appealing to them?

Find information on popular tourist sites in Hangzhou, such as:

  • West Lake
  • The Grand Canal
  • Leifeng Pagoda
  • Lingyin Temple
  • Jingci Temple
  • Yue Fei Temple
  • Longjing Tea Farms
  • Xixi National Wetland Park
  • Qinghefang Ancient Street
  • Wuzhen Water Village

On a Google Presentation or PowerPoint, create a slide for each site you wish to include in your presentation. Include images of each site, its location on a map of Hangzhou, and its importance to the history of the city. Make your slideshow as interesting as possible to entice potential visitors to visit Hangzhou.

Blog Post | Food Prices

Thanksgiving Dinner Will Be 8.8 Percent Cheaper This Year

Be thankful for the increase in human knowledge that transforms atoms into valuable resources.

Gale L. Pooley —

Summary: There has been a remarkable decrease in the “time price” of a Thanksgiving dinner over the past 38 years, despite nominal cost increases. Thanks to rising wages and innovation, the time required for a blue-collar worker to afford the meal dropped significantly, making food much more abundant. Population growth and human knowledge drive resource abundance, allowing for greater prosperity and efficiency in providing for more people.

Since 1986, the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) has conducted an annual price survey of food items that make up in a typical Thanksgiving Day dinner. The items on this shopping list are intended to feed a group of 10 people, with plenty of leftovers remaining. The list includes a turkey, a pumpkin pie mix, milk, a vegetable tray, bread rolls, pie shells, green peas, fresh cranberries, whipping cream, cubed stuffing, sweet potatoes, and several miscellaneous ingredients.

So, what has happened to the price of a Thanksgiving Day dinner over the past 38 years? The AFBF reports that in nominal terms, the cost rose from $28.74 in 1986 to $58.08 in 2024. That’s an increase of 102.1 percent.

Since we buy things with money but pay for them with time, we should analyze the cost of a Thanksgiving Day dinner using time prices. To calculate the time price, we divide the nominal price of the meal by the nominal wage rate. That gives us the number of work hours required to earn enough money to feed those 10 guests.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the blue-collar hourly wage rate increased by 240.2 percent – from $8.96 per hour in October 1986 to $30.48 in October 2024.

Remember that when wages increase faster than prices, time prices decrease. Consequently, we can say that between 1986 and 2024 the time price of the Thanksgiving dinner for a blue-collar worker declined from 3.2 hours to 1.9 hours, or 40.6 percent.

That means that blue-collar workers can buy 1.68 Thanksgiving Day dinners in 2024 for the same number of hours it took to buy one dinner in 1986. We can also say that Thanksgiving dinner became 68 percent more abundant.

Here is a chart showing the time price trend for the Thanksgiving dinner over the past 38 years:

The figure shows that the time price of a Thanksgiving dinner for a blue collar worker has gone down since 1986.
The figure shows that the time price of a Thanksgiving meal has decreased, while population, the nominal price of the meal, and hourly earnings have all increased.

The lowest time price for the Thanksgiving dinner was 1.87 hours in 2020, but then COVID-19 policies struck, and the time price jumped to 2.29 hours in 2022.

In 2023, the time price of the Thanksgiving dinner came to 2.09 hours. This year, it came to 1.91 hours – a decline of 8.8 percent. For the time it took to buy Thanksgiving dinner last year, we get 9.6 percent more food this year.

Between 1986 and 2024, the US population rose from 240 million to 337 million – a 40.4 percent increase. Over the same period, the Thanksgiving dinner time price decreased by 40.6 percent. Each one percentage point increase in population corresponded to a one percentage point decrease in the time price.

To get a sense of the relationship between food prices and population growth, imagine providing a Thanksgiving Day dinner for everyone in the United States. If the whole of the United States had consisted of blue-collar workers in 1986, the total Thanksgiving dinner time price would have been 77 million hours. By 2024, the time price fell to 64.2 million hours – a decline of 12.8 million hours or 16.6 percent.

Given that the population of the United States increased by 40.4 percent between 1986 and 2024, we can confidently say that more people truly make resources much more abundant.

An earlier version of this article was published at Gale Winds on 11/21/2024.

NBC News | Personal Income

The Typical US Worker Out-Earned Inflation by $1,400 a Year

“While higher costs for everything from milk to medicines have preoccupied U.S. consumers in the pandemic era, earnings have also risen enough, on average, to push up households’ purchasing power a bit. And blue-collar workers have been the biggest beneficiaries.

An analysis published in July by economists at the Treasury Department found that the median worker can afford the same representative basket of goods and services as they did in 2019 — plus have an additional $1,400 a year.”

From NBC News.

Wall Street Journal | Wealth & Poverty

The Dramatic Turnaround in Millennials’ Finances

“The median household net worth of older millennials, born in the 1980s, rose to $130,000 in 2022 from $60,000 in 2019, according to inflation-adjusted data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Median wealth more than quadrupled to $41,000 for Americans born in the 1990s, which includes the generation’s youngest members, born in 1996. 

The turnaround has been so dramatic that millennials—mocked at times for being perpetually behind in building wealth, buying homes, getting married and having children—now find themselves ahead.

In early 2024, millennials and older members of Gen Z had, on average and adjusting for inflation, about 25% more wealth than Gen Xers and baby boomers did at a similar age, according to a St. Louis Fed analysis.”

From Wall Street Journal.