10 Fen - Guangxu 7.3 Candareens

Kwangtung's 1889 silver fen issues mark the province's first serious attempt at mechanized coinage, the mint having acquired British-made presses through arrangements brokered partly by the Imperial Maritime Customs Service. The candareen weight standard used here — a Chinese monetary unit rather than a Western one — reflects the Qing court's insistence on maintaining indigenous weight nomenclature even as the physical production process was thoroughly Europeanized.

The Guangzhou facility that struck these pieces would become the model for subsequent provincial mints across China, with its equipment specifications and organizational structure replicated at Hubei and elsewhere within the decade.