1 Yuan Bank of Eastern Chekiang, brown

The Bank of Eastern Chekiang was a provincial institution operating in the Nationalist-controlled interior of Zhejiang province during the final years of the Second Sino-Japanese War. By 1945, hyperinflationary pressure on the central Nationalist currency — the fabi — had pushed local and provincial banks into issuing their own notes to maintain any functional circulation at the village level. This 1 Yuan note belongs to that emergency provincial layer, not to any formal central banking framework.

The "b" suffix in the Pick reference indicates a color variety, distinguishing this brown example from otherwise identical printings. Color variations in wartime Chinese provincial issues frequently reflect nothing more exotic than ink availability.