100 Yuan Romance of Three Kingdoms - Zhuge Liang on throne

The fifth and final coin in China's Romance of the Three Kingdoms gold series, this 1995 issue closed a run that began in 1991. The series drew from Luo Guanzhong's 14th-century historical novel rather than directly from the events of the Three Kingdoms period itself — a meaningful distinction, since the Zhuge Liang of popular Chinese imagination is substantially a literary construction. His portrayal as the consummate strategist-sage had been hardening in Chinese cultural consciousness for centuries before the novel fixed it permanently.

People's Bank issues of this type were struck by the Shenzhen Guobao Mint. Mintages for the later coins in this series were lower than the opening issues.