Fengtien Province's copper-alloy cash issues of the early 1900s emerged from a mint at Mukden (modern Shenyang) that had been substantially retooled with foreign machinery following the upheavals of the Boxer Rebellion. The 1903 date places this piece in the short window before the Russo-Japanese War effectively shut down normal administration of the region, as Manchuria became a theater of conflict between two imperial powers neither of which was Chinese.
Y#88 is notably scarcer than the later Fengtien machine-cash issues, the provincial mint's output having been severely disrupted by 1904.
Fengtien Province's copper-alloy cash issues of the early 1900s emerged from a mint at Mukden (modern Shenyang) that had been substantially retooled with foreign machinery following the upheavals of the Boxer Rebellion. The 1903 date places this piece in the short window before the Russo-Japanese War effectively shut down normal administration of the region, as Manchuria became a theater of conflict between two imperial powers neither of which was Chinese.
Y#88 is notably scarcer than the later Fengtien machine-cash issues, the provincial mint's output having been severely disrupted by 1904.