2 Cents - The Sun Co. Ltd. Shanghai

The Sun Company was a major department store operation headquartered on Nanjing Road, and these small-denomination scrip notes were issued for use within the store's own commercial ecosystem — essentially private cash substitutes during a period when small change in Shanghai was chronically scarce. The 1930s saw dozens of Shanghai merchants and businesses issuing similar fractional scrip, partly from practical necessity and partly because the city's monetary situation was genuinely chaotic, with competing currencies from Japanese military authorities, the Nationalist government, and foreign concession banks all circulating simultaneously.

The date range spans the Japanese occupation of the International Settlement after December 1941, raising real questions about how long these notes actually remained in use after the store's commercial autonomy was effectively curtailed.