What is this Chinese brick?

Any idea what that is?
Not sure what it is made of. Heavy, soft and easy to scratch, so maybe lead or so. Or pure silver?

 

I've seen ink sticks, a block of dried and compressed ink; you shave off a bit, dissolve in water to make ink. The ones I've seen were black, but maybe they can also be painted gold; maybe that adds interesting gold flecks to the ink......
Those are soft and easy to scratch, but pretty light-weight.
You don't say, but maybe imply, that this might be metal.
Is this metal? How big? Magnetic?
Example of ink-stick:

 

I doubt silver, LEAD is soft and heavy,
If lead - a new scratch will reveal bright silver color

 

And of course, if it is metal, it is obviously not an ink stick.
But here is an example of a gold-colored ink stick (reputedly circa 1862, when they were often included in British water-color sets):

 

Bout the size of ink stick. Metal, scratch reveals silver color.

 

Not ink then; does seem like lead would be a good possibility.....maybe a weight? Maybe someone can translate.

 

True, Maybe some kind of standard weight for a weigh scale - if it was just an ingot for melting I question why is was colored gold.

 

Could it be funeral money? It was a Chinese custom to burn hell bank notes at a funeral to ensure the departed a rich after life with the shades of the ancestors. It was also known to burn paper goods for the comfort of the shade of the dead. A gold coloured lead bar would be in this spirit, for some reason the ancestors were assumed to be highly gullible, unable to tell the fake from the real.

https://www.google.com/search?q=chinese+funeral+money

 

Not a clue but try tael bar.

 

Good clue, SIS. Though I can't read it, the bottom three characters appear to be the same as on this (reputed) 50 tael silver ingot seen on pinterest. No idea why one would paint a silver ingot gold, though, seems a bit strange.

 

Not gold color, poor images.It's grayish. I'll clean it and take better photos

 

You never did tell us the weight - unless I missed it along the readings. If it is silver then you should have a mark on the bar stating it's fineness. But need to interpret the Chinese markings

 

Still in the trunk Will tell you weight soon. If silver, it has to be 999 because it's too soft.

 

Most silver content was .925 at the most as adding extra metals into the silver made it more durable (harder) for items - .999 was really developed for coinage and collectible bars as the smelting process is more invoved.

 

About 850 grams, 7 1/2" long.

 

Maybe i can help with the translation (yes, i know Chinese). The engraving says it is from Taiwan when it was a province of ancient China. It is Silver bar (used as money) 50 tael.

1 ancient tael is equal to 34g. so maybe you can tell from the weight if it could be silver? Or maybe get it tested?


One thing doesn’t make sense to me is that the name on the back actually refers to a place in mainland china. I don’t know why.

 

If it was the real thing it suppose to be 50x34g=1700g?

 

Thanks a lot with the translation. Is it sure that this is 50 teal but not less, maybe 25? Does it say somewhere how much it is?

 

yes, i am afraid it does say 50 tael.

 

Well.. I'll try at least to test it for silver.
Btw, are the characters Traditional or Simplified?