On the one hand, the anti-counterfeiting of silver tickets is guaranteed by law. Anyone who dares to imitate printing will go straight to prison and have his head beheaded. On the other hand, it relies on the support of anti-counterfeiting technology. By the Qing dynasty, the anti-counterfeiting technology was becoming more and more mature, and it was difficult to forge silver tickets. Among them, anti-counterfeiting technology includes the following items:
First, people are prohibited from buying kayak paper privately.
Pipichuan paper is made of paper bark. It is called Pipichuan Paper because it is produced in Sichuan. Pipichuan paper is bright and white, durable and complicated, so it is difficult for ordinary paper mills to forge it. Therefore, Pipichuan paper has become a special paper for printing money, and the government prohibits private purchase. Buying this kind of paper is as serious as forging a silver ticket.
Second, the pattern of printing silver tickets is quite complicated.
The printed patterns of silver tickets are very complicated, and most of them are hand-carved, including the Eight Immortals, Twenty-four Filial Pieties, flowers and plants, mountain scenery, or famous paintings. In the Song and Yuan Dynasties, most of the paper money patterns were houses, flowers, birds and figures, with patterned borders outside.
It is conceivable that if you want to forge a silver ticket, you have to go through the engraving. There are not many sculptors in China who can carve patterns of silver tickets. At the risk of being beheaded, it is estimated that not many people will do it, because the government will easily find sculptors.
Third, the printing plate has a time limit.
At that time, someone had already made fake silver tickets, so the official and the bank kept changing plates. In the early Ming Dynasty, paper money was printed with woodcut, and later it was replaced with copper plate. At the same time, it is stipulated that the printing plate should only be used for one year, and it should be replaced after expiration, and the old version should be destroyed in time. Such a high replacement frequency makes it difficult for the workshop that makes fake silver tickets to keep up with the use frequency of printing plates, and it is difficult to make fakes.
There is also an anti-counterfeiting technology, that is, micro-carving text anti-counterfeiting. The key point of this technology is that a large number of anti-counterfeiting micro-carved words are printed on the ticket face, and the selected contents are generally famous sayings or works that persuade people to be kind. This kind of micro-carving technology is beyond the reach of ordinary people. It requires Excellence, and often needs the carving experts in the industry to complete it.
Sometimes, for better anti-counterfeiting, it is necessary to deliberately carve individual characters in micro-carving. Wang Xizhi's Preface to Lanting is famous because it represents the highest achievement of running script. Printed on the silver ticket, deliberately engraved a few words, so that counterfeiters are puzzled. Known as the highest peak of silver ticket production-Beijing Rishengchang Silver Ticket, its inherent anti-counterfeiting technology is to print Zhu Bolu's 5 16 word "family management motto" on it.
Why did Zhu Bailu's "Housekeeping Motto" openly appear on the cover of the silver ticket? First of all, let's talk about Zhu Bailu, a famous philosopher and educator in the late Ming Dynasty. The full text of his family management motto is 5 16 words. Although the text is concise, its meaning is profound. This is the most influential and detailed family management book in the past 300 years.
Let's take a look at what is written in this book:
It is not easy to think about a porridge and a meal; A bowl of porridge and a bowl of rice, we should think about it when we eat. They are hard to come by.
Don't talk too much in life, you will suffer: this sentence means that a gentleman should first control his mouth and talk less. Once he talks too much, there will be mistakes.
Don't forget to help: you helped others, don't take it to heart, others helped you, so don't forget.
These aphorisms are unpretentious, and in common parlance, they are very simple truths, but they make people feel intimate when they read them. They seem as light as white water, but they are unforgettable.
Compared with Preface to the Lanting Pavilion, The Family Management Motto is definitely not as neat and gorgeous as the parallel and scattered combination of the latter. The latter can't be compared with the former if it is easy to educate the world and understand the truth of life. The stenographer engraved the motto on the silver ticket, which not only played the role of miniature anti-counterfeiting, but also played the role of being close to the people, benefiting the people and teaching the people.
Silver ticket is not only a means of currency circulation in the society at that time, but also a good product worthy of our modern collection. In the ancient society without high technology, the printing level of silver tickets had reached such a peak at that time. As modern people, we should be proud of it.
When Zhu Bolu wrote Family Instructions, he never thought that his work would be engraved on a silver ticket, which really played a positive role in the wide spread of Family Instructions.