User:Donald Trung/Da Shu coinage/Why I was inspired to (attempt to) write "Da Shu coinage"



Originally I had never planned to write the article “Da Shu coinage”, in fact it follows the long line of Wikipedia articles I had no intention of writing to simply give the readers a most complete possibly overview of Chinese cash coins possible, originally I wished to finish writing the English Wikipedia article “List of Chinese cash coins by inscription” as a way of “bridging all leftover gaps” in information regarding Chinese cash coins, whenever such a monumental task comes in front of me I start procrastinating, when it comes to work I’m always focused, I teach at a University and my students actually have a very high pass rate because of my personal investment in their ability to study and I even personally tutor a few of them if needed, in contrast when it concerns my own hobbies I will look for literally any excuse to “do the largest thing last” even if it’s a lot easier, on the English Wikipedia I’ve had four (4) periods of this, the first time was with the article “Qing dynasty coinage” where I deliberately wrote about literally every other category of cash coins including the articles “Liao dynasty coinage”, “Southern Song dynasty coinage”, “Western Xia coinage”, and “Jin dynasty coinage (1115–1234)”, the second (2nd) time I had this I started writing literally about every form of Chinese numismatic charms, the third time was while writing the “List of Chinese cash coins by inscription” article and while I reached the Dynasties and Kingdoms that produced Wu Zhu cash coins thought to myself “but what if the readers want to differentiate between the Wu Zhu’s of the Chen Dynasty and the Liang Dynasty?” while writing the “Wu Zhu” article I split the article “Kucha coinage” as I thought that it was “too much scrolling” on my phablet (yes, that’s the actual reason why I rushed split that article) and during this period also finished the “Hongwu Tongbao” article.

Now I’m in my 4th (fourth) period of procrastination where the goal is so I could retire from the English Wikipedia to focus on the mountains of work I want to complete on Wikimedia Commons, and I mean MOUNTAINS of work. This is the work I’ve planned to have completed some time ago but neglected to finish my coverage of all Chinese cash coins here, the plan was to end with the “Kangxi Tongbao” and “Qianlong Tongbao” articles and then finally (semi-retire) as those are the only cash coins where I can find sufficient information about to write Wikipedia articles about them and I could then have “two (2) model articles” where “the next generation of (Chinese) cash coin writers on the English Wikipedia” can base it on how to write about Manchu coinage, however rather than completing them I got distracted. Originally it started with the “Da Ming Baochao” article which I really had no intention of writing but then I simply found a treasure trove of information about them on a website that seemed as if it was no longer being actively maintained. If there’s 1 (one) thing I’ve learned as a collector of Chinese cash coins mostly dependent on the internet for many years is that most informative websites turn into “404’s” and that there's no one to archive them, no one backs the information up, no one backs the images up, after they disappear the information and images hosted on them will be gone forever. Now with banknotes it’s easy to back them up to Wikimedia Commons as scans of 2D objects that are in the public domain are also in the public domain, but as (cash) coins are 3D objects it’s actually more difficult and it requires OTRS permission, however thankfully I’ve obtained that permission for almost every major cash coin-orientated website in the English language, but that’s a whole different story. So naturally I had to write that article, as the supposed paper money of the Later Zhou Dynasty was mentioned I had to write a piece about its currency, for that I visited my usual source “ http://primaltrek.com/chinesecoins.html ” and found a whole gap between the last Wu Zhu’s and the Tang dynasty that I didn’t import from that website after I've already obsessively imported all information about Chinese charms, amulets, and talismans I could find and all other information I basically viewed Gary Ashkenazy's Primaltrek’s cash coin information as “✅”, this inspired me to peruse for more information that I’ve possibly missed and found a lot of information about Southern Tang coinage that I overlooked, now again I had absolutely no intention on creating a separate article but as the section eventually became so long I simply couldn’t let it be “a mere expansion” as it would be larger than its intended target. I also started adding a lot of “missed “Chinese” Dynasties” to the “List of Chinese cash coins by inscription” article after I asked the Muscovite expert Vladimir Belyaev for advice and after the initial compliment came with a whole laundry list of things to improve about that article so I did. The biggest complaint he had is how I completely missed the cash coins issued by the rebels of the Northern Song Dynasty and that’s when I realised that they were in David Hartill's “Cast Chinese Coins”, but that for whatever reason I missed them. So after finishing the “Southern Tang coinage” article I found myself nearing completion, I was working on the skeleton of the “Kangxi Tongbao” cash coin article and finally (semi-)retire from the English Wikipedia and focus on the thousands of media files I wanted to upload to Wikimedia Commons…. Then I stumbled upon “ http://primaltrek.com/blog/2016/11/16/earliest-peasant-rebellion-in-china-to-mint-coins/ ” which is literally the first article in Gary Ashkenazy's Primaltrek “Blog” I’ve ever read, for whatever reason focusing on EVERYTHING before and after the Song Dynasty I just developed a blind spot for it which could suddenly see again, I’ve so obsessively imported all Chinese charm-, amulet-, and talisman-related information and that about literally every other subject on Gary Ashkenazy's Primaltrek and David Hartill's “Cast Chinese Coins” that I overlooked it… so I completely reassessed the website and realised that I also missed “Biscuit (cash) coins” and/or “Cake (cash) coins” so I had to add those. While researching “Northern Song rebel cash coins” I stumbled across “ http://www.charm.ru/coins/china/ssong-rebel.shtml ” (“The Southern Song Dynasty Rebel Coin” by Vladimir Belyaev) on the Chinese Coinage Web Site (Charm.ru) and realised that I skipped over an entire category of Southern Song Dynasty cash coins by simply reducing it to only one sentence (last year, in 2017). So while my mind is on (semi-)retiring that whole “List of Chinese cash coins by inscription” opened up a whole world of new subjects that I simply forgot about or didn’t cover, although thankfully I’m nearing all of their completion now they’re all “unintended content” that I’m adding for the sake of writing “a most complete coverage possible” of Chinese cash coins on Wikimedia projects, and although I prefer to be importing images of Chinese cash coins and banknotes to Wikimedia Commons, I have a need to “COMPLETELY finish this first” here. The interesting thing is that while I’m writing about these subjects I’m learning a lot of new things about them (almost) every day. The moment I stop learning about them is the moment I can finally stop writing about them. --Donald Trung (talk) 09:22, 18 September 2018 (UTC)