10 Yuan Farmer's Bank of Chung-Chou, front proof

The Farmer's Bank of Chung-Chou was a provincial institution operating out of Henan, one of several regional banks that issued their own currency during the fractured final years of Nationalist rule. By 1948, hyperinflation had made orderly note production nearly meaningless in practice — the Central Bank's own issues were losing value faster than they could be printed. A front proof like this one almost certainly never reached circulation; it survived precisely because it was pulled from the production process rather than released into it.

Front proofs from provincial Chinese banks of this period are genuinely uncommon. Most were destroyed in the chaos surrounding the Communist advance through Henan in late 1948.