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5 Mace = ½ Tael
| Issuer | Imperial Bank of China |
|---|---|
| Year | 1898 |
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| Printer | Bradbury, Wilkinson & Company |
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| Obverse description | Dark blue, brown and red on orange underprint. Two confronted dragons flank a circular seal vignette at upper centre, with Chinese inscriptions in vertical columns throughout. Denomination '伍錢' (5 Mace) rendered in large red characters at centre, within a guilloche border. Dated 14 November 1898, Peking Branch issue. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 中國通商銀行 中國儲備銀 伍錢 大清光緒二十四年十月吉 京城寧年銀 壹兩 惠票即付 |
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| Comments |
The Imperial Bank of China was the country's first modern chartered bank, established by imperial edict in 1897 with British-style statutes drafted largely under the influence of Sir Robert Hart's customs administration. This note predates the chaos of the Boxer Rebellion and the subsequent currency reforms that would fragment Chinese banking for a generation. Bradbury, Wilkinson engraved the plates in London — the firm was handling British colonial and quasi-colonial financial printing across Asia throughout this period.
The denomination itself is telling: expressing value simultaneously in mace and tael reflects the tael's role as a weight-based unit that varied city to city, a monetary inconvenience the Imperial Bank was quietly trying to rationalize away from the start.