10 Taels

The Imperial Bank of China was itself only chartered in 1897, making this note among the earliest the institution ever produced. Bradbury, Wilkinson engraved and printed the series in London, a common arrangement for Chinese banking institutions of the period that lacked domestic security printing infrastructure capable of meeting anti-counterfeiting standards.

The tael denomination is worth noting: the tael was a weight-based monetary unit, not a coin, and its actual silver value varied considerably by region — Shanghai taels, Haikwan taels, and Peking taels were not interchangeable. A banknote denominated in taels therefore carried an implicit ambiguity about exactly what it promised to pay, and where.