Be Like Lightning

OP: Why couldn’t traditional Chinese Yinpiao银票/silver drafts be forged if they were merely slips of paper? (cr大明宝钞，渐越)

Traditional Chinese yinpiao/silver drafts were paper vouchers issued by private banks starting from the Song Dynasty(960–1279). People could exchange these slips for physical silver at bank branches across the country.

Silver drafts were made in multiple copies with matching serrated seal edges. One copy went to the customer and others stayed at the bank. All edges had to fit perfectly together to withdraw silver. The unique split edge marks were almost impossible to copy.

This mechanism is known as qifeng骑缝 (split-joint seal) in China. It first originated in the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046–771 BC). The Rites of Zhou records that contracts were written on bamboo or wooden slips in duplicate. Notches and marks were carved in the middle before splitting the slips, with each party keeping one half. The two halves would be matched by their notches for verification.

During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770–221 BC), this idea evolved into hufu虎符/tiger tally tokens. A military tally was split into two pieces with identical inscriptions carved along the split edge. Troops could only be deployed if the patterns and characters on both halves perfectly aligned, serving as a metal version of the split-joint anti-counterfeiting system.

The technology matured in the Tang Dynasty (618–907). Government documents and private contracts commonly used split-joint seals stamped across the dividing line. The Chinese character "hetong合同" (contract) was written across the middle before the paper was torn apart, so the complete characters would only appear when the two halves were put together. This split-coupon system was later adopted for Song Dynasty (960–1279) jiaozi paper money and yinpiao/silver drafts of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1912).

Official Song dynasty paper money (Jiaozi交子) was abolished in 1107. Private silver drafts issued by Qing-era piaohao票行 (ancient exchange banks) vanished completely in 1951, hit hard by modern banks and currency reforms. Nowadays silver drafts no longer circulate as currency. Their collectible value depends on their rarity and physical condition.

First they were called "chirographs", but later the word "indenture" (in its earliest meaning as just a legal document of any kind between two people) came to be used, originating from the practice of a contract being written twice on a single piece of parchment and then cut in half with serrated edges (as in dent, "teeth" -> indents -> indenture) in order for each party to take one half, so they could later piece them together and verify that there had been no forgery -- same as the Chinese silver drafts!

(Charter of the Clerecía de Ledesma, 1252, showing the serrated indents at the top -- presumably they are cutting rather than tearing because they're using parchment, which I expect is much harder to tear than wood-pulp paper like the Chinese were using)

Came across this art installation, Liza Lou's Kitchen, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC. It's a kitchen made of tiny glass beads, that artist Liza Lou did, taking 5 yrs. to complete, from 1991 - 1996.

My favorite part is the sink.

Then again, aporagender includes a "strong feeling of gender" and can include neutrality. So are these two different concepts? Is the aporine "strong gendered feeling" different than maverique's "strong inner sense of gender"? Are we talking about comgender? When comparing aporinity and ilyaginity, the difference is neutrality - but what is neutrality in this sense?

really interesting to see ilya "lacks the strong inner sense of gender that maverique has" - looking back, i did indeed focus on Not Related To Neutrality as more important to me. like vesper (coiner of maverique), i identified as neutrois for a while but grew dissatisfied.

for me, neutrois was a conviction of neutrality As Gender - a nixing/neutralizing of incoming gendering forces, a pursuit of neutering the body. the idea of eunuch as third gender, the saris, the nullo; a sex without primary sex characteristics and with minimized secondary sex characteristics, conjoined with matching gender identity, a feeling of excision, perhaps of smoothness. a lavender-grey, sort of subtle to the unpracticed or casual eye that expects pink or blue

(you can see the connection to my choice of url for my transition sideblog, blockers-and-ectomies!)

i came to dislike equating a gender identity with a particular bodily transition. feels like bad praxis. and turned out nullification wasn't right for me, just close

and well, it turned out it was just easiest to see the points of friction rebuffing incoming gendering forces - often it's easiest to start by identifying "not that." but all along, i did have feelings of gender euphoria, of "yes this," bright, orange, a bronze drill piercing a blue sky, a jagged spiral snaking upwards. not a neutralize that meets incoming bolts and dispels them into nothing, but the kind of magic spell that counterattacks with a lash of its own color. even if it gets beaten down in power.

i threw together ilya as a statement of "i am here, a gendered force; not androgynous, not derived from the male-androgyne-female man-androgyne-woman masculine-androgynous-feminine spectra; not neutral as in 0-0-0 with no further gendered attributes;" and, not exactly neutral as in a fourth column of smooth neutrois flavor. definitely marked in a linguistic sense

it looks like maverique has gone on to mean this, too! to mean specifically not neutral-flavored, which i was worried about. (because, of course, folks are always mixing and juxtaposing, relating things back to systems already developed. this is part of exploring and understanding! but at the time it did seem like alia and apora and anything anyone came up with was getting very much distilled into neutrality flavor remix, precluding our imaginations from the possibility of a non-neutral gender that wasn't just snapping right back to androgynous.)

so i dunno if ilya is distinct, or functionally synonymous with maverique now (edit altho omg this sentiment on the difference is so sweet). but i hope this speaks to what a sense of neutrality in gender might mean, and a bit on inner sense of gender

[Plain text ID: Demiasteresque End ID]

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A term for being partially asteresque

[Plain text ID: A term for being partially asteresque End ID]

[pt: the androgynous experiences survey. end pt]

surprise ! after seeing other surveys going around about specific experiences, i decided to make one focused on androgyny as a whole.

it's a tad long, but i hope it's fun to do ! this is entirely out of curiosity and genuine interest in how fellow androgynous being experience their androgyny.

I will close it manually in 1 or 2 weeks, so there's no hurry. please let me know of any issues and enjoy !