Tea Bricks Were Legal Tender in Siberia Until the 1940s

While most of the world was using paper money and coins in the early 20th century, nomads in Siberia and Mongolia were still conducting business with something you could actually drink: solid blocks of compressed tea.

Tea bricks weren't just accepted as currency—they were preferred over metallic coins. Until World War II, these dense blocks of compressed tea leaves functioned as the primary medium of exchange across vast stretches of Siberia, Mongolia, Tibet, and Central Asia.

Why Tea Made Better Money Than Coins

For nomadic peoples constantly on the move, tea bricks solved multiple problems at once. They were durable, easy to transport on horseback, and could be preserved indefinitely under the right conditions. Unlike metal coins that just sat in your pocket, tea bricks were edible currency—you could brew them for drinking, use them as medicine for coughs and colds, or even eat them during times of food scarcity.

Each brick was cleverly scored with grooves so sections could be broken off to make change, pay for small purchases, or brew a quick pot of tea. The average brick was valued at one Szechuan-Tibet rupee or eight ga-den tangkas, and people used them for everything from paying wages to buying provisions.

A Centuries-Old Trade Network

The practice had deep historical roots. Russian caravans spent months traveling across Siberia, trading furs for tea bricks that were mainly produced in the Ya'an area of Sichuan province, China. These bricks came in five different quality grades, each valued accordingly.

Tea bricks were preferred in Asian trade because they were far more compact and less susceptible to physical damage than loose leaf tea—crucial advantages when your goods were bouncing around on the back of a camel for months.

An Edible Economy

The Bank of Canada Museum and the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History both house examples of these currency tea bricks in their numismatic collections, recognizing them as legitimate forms of money rather than mere trade goods.

This wasn't some primitive barter system—it was a sophisticated monetary economy that simply used a more practical medium of exchange than precious metals. The tea brick standard only finally disappeared during the upheaval of World War II, making it one of the most recent examples of commodity money in human history.