1 Tael Khotan District Administration

Khotan in the mid-1930s was effectively running its own monetary affairs. The district administration issued these notes during a period when central authority over Xinjiang was fractured between Nationalist Chinese claims, Soviet-backed warlord Sheng Shicai in Ürümqi, and persistent local pressures from Turkic-speaking populations who had briefly established an independent state in the region just years earlier. A locally printed tael note, secured by nothing more than an official seal, was a practical solution to a genuine administrative vacuum.

The tael as a unit was already being phased out across most of China by this point — the 1933 yuan reforms had formalized its obsolescence — making this note an anachronism almost from the moment of issue.