3 Taels Khotan District Administration

Khotan — modern Hotan — sits at the southern rim of the Tarim Basin, and by the mid-1930s the region was effectively cut off from central Nationalist authority. The District Administration issued these notes under conditions of extreme material scarcity, which is precisely why they were printed on newsprint. No specialist paper stock was available, and likely no specialist printer either — the notes were produced locally, which accounts for the crude impression quality common across the series.

The tael denomination is significant: Xinjiang's monetary fragmentation in this period meant that provincial and district authorities each issued in their own units, and the tael persisted here long after it had been formally abolished elsewhere in Republican China.