10 Yuan

The Yick Kee Bank was a small private Chinese bank operating in the Pearl River Delta region during the fractious warlord period — exactly the kind of local institution that issued notes to meet cash shortages when larger banking networks were unreliable or absent. Private bank notes of this type circulated alongside government issues, military scrip, and foreign bank paper in a fiercely competitive and largely unregulated monetary environment.

Printing in Macao rather than Hong Kong or Shanghai suggests deliberate distance from the British colonial financial apparatus. Survival rate for minor private Chinese bank issues of this period is low — most were redeemed, repudiated, or simply wore out in heavy local trade use.