Abstract: There is no dought that the British asked for 21,000,000 silver dollars as indemnity for the Opium war however,there are different opinions on how much Qing government actually paid.The British asked for the indemnity of the Nanking Treaty in dollars,but the Qing government paid it off in taels. The actual amount of the indemnity can’t be added up together, because there were different conversion rates and scales in different periods. By examining every item and recounting the amount in an unified standard, we can get the actual amount of the indemnity:15,058,100 liang measured by Caoping fine silver,14,689,400 liang measured by Guangping fine silver，14,792,700 liang measured by Central Bank fine silver,and 14,646,500 liang by customs scale.

Key words: the Opium War, indemnity, conversion rates, scales