A man from Qianwanhu, a village from northern China, had in mind to place pipes for tap water right after he has dug a channel. During his digging he suddenly found an old hidden basement, which is today called "money cellar". The basement contained around 10,000 ancient Chinese coins, weighting about 1.5 tons.

Just for your information: Qianwanhu is located in Changzi County, which in its turn is found in the Shanxi Province. The digger, who's name is Li Lin, is an official working for the Changzi Center of Cultural Heritage and Tourism. In an announcement, dated August 21, 2007 and published in the People's Daily newspaper, he mentioned that he found the cellar on a depth of 1.5 meters. Quite interesting is the fact that the coins were "piled orderly into a cuboid of 1.3 meters long, 0.65 meter wide, and 1 meter high."

According to the explanations provided by Li, the coins were placed in the cellar somewhere around 1127. He mentioned that the majority of coins were created throughout the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), the rest of the coins were probably made during the reign of the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) and Tang Dynasty (618-907).

The first pan liang bronze coinage continued throughout the reign of the Han Dynasty. These coins, however, debased, being ushered during the coinage reform, which took place in 118 BC and led by Emperor Wu Ti. The next 800 years included his 5-shu coinage in circulation, thus becoming the standard for Chinese coinage.

Tang Dynasty Emperor Kao Tsu was the first to establish the standard of round coins. These coins were used till the end of the 19^th century.

Specialists is archaeology suggest that the coins found in the cellar could have been owned by "liege" lords, they might have been the property of a bank during a war, or these coins were the private property of wealthy individuals who might have hidden the coins during a war.

Some coins found in the cellar were described as being in good condition, some of their characters on the surface still being legible. All the coins were transported to local cultural relic authorities.