Sino-Japanese comparisons Chang Yun-chung explains in his own idiosyncratic fashion what he takes as the essence of "buying and selling" art: "In Chinese, the characters for 'buy' and 'sell' both have the radical denoting a cowry shell. Cowry shells meant money, meaning that the ancients linked this word to transactions in the marketplace.
中日大不同從事古物交易，張允中對「買賣」二字有其獨到的說文解字：「買賣」兩字的下方都是「貝」字，「貝」指錢幣，所以古人造字就深諳商場手段。