5 Fen Bank of China

The Bank of China's 1918 fractional fen notes were issued partly in response to the chronic shortage of small copper coins that plagued China's commercial centres in the late Republican period. Merchants hoarded coin and transacting in very small amounts became genuinely difficult — low-denomination paper filled a gap the mints couldn't close.

Pick 46 is known in multiple regional variants distinguished by overprinted place names, and establishing which branch actually issued a given example matters significantly to valuation. The signatures of R.H. Chen and N. Feng help narrow the window, but branch attribution still hinges on the overprint.