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.
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.