1 Cash - Qianyou Baoqian, Tangut script

The Western Xia state — founded by the Tangut people in what is now Ningxia and Gansu — maintained a distinct written script artificially constructed in 1036 under Emperor Jingzong, explicitly to assert cultural independence from the surrounding Chinese and Khitan polities. Coins bearing that script rather than Chinese characters were a direct political instrument of that separatism. The Qianyou reign spanned Emperor Renzong's long rule, during which Western Xia navigated tributary relationships with both the Jin dynasty to the northeast and the Southern Song.

Tangut-script cash remain genuinely scarce in western collections; the empire's destruction by the Mongols in 1227 was thorough enough that much of the material record was obliterated.