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10 000 000 Hell Bank Note
| Issuer | 冥通銀行 (Hell Bank) |
|---|---|
| Year | |
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| Composition | Paper |
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| Obverse description | Red and green votive note printed on thin paper, with the denomination 壹仟萬 (Ten Million) in large Chinese characters at centre against a guilloche rosette underprint. An oval vignette to the right contains a bust portrait of the Jade Emperor in imperial court regalia. Two facsimile signatures appear at bottom centre and right, with a serial number in the upper right field. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 10,000,000 冥通銀行 冥府紙幣 壹仟萬 陰冥通用 |
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| Comments |
Hell Bank Notes are ceremonial paper offerings burned at Chinese funerals and ancestral rites, intended to supply the deceased with funds in the afterlife. The practice draws on centuries of Taoist and folk Buddhist tradition, but the modern printed format — complete with invented bank names, serial numbers, and absurdly inflated denominations — dates largely from the mid-twentieth century, when manufacturers began styling them after real currency to make them more convincing as symbolic substitutes.
The denomination arms race is genuine: billions gave way to trillions, and this ten-million figure is now considered modest by current production standards.