2 Cash - Qiandao Yuanbao, Regular script, Zheng

Qiandao was the reign era of Emperor Xiaozong of Song, who came to the throne in 1162 following the abdication of Gaozong — the ruler who had presided over the catastrophic loss of northern China to the Jurchen Jin dynasty. By the Qiandao period, the Southern Song court was firmly entrenched at Lin'an, and cash coinage was being issued in multiple script styles simultaneously, a bureaucratic practice that allows modern collectors to reconstruct mint output sequences with unusual precision. The "Zheng" designation here refers to regular script, one of several calligraphic registers used across concurrent issues.