5 Mace - Xianfeng Issued by Ching Cheng-chi; engraved by Wan Ch'uan

Shanghai County's sycee-based silver issues of the 1850s emerged directly from the chaos of the Taiping Rebellion, which had severed normal Qing fiscal networks and forced provincial authorities to produce their own emergency coinage. The engraver credit to Wan Ch'uan is unusually specific for a Chinese provincial issue of this period — most comparable pieces are anonymous — and suggests a deliberate effort to establish accountability in a monetary system under severe stress.

Ching Cheng-chi's authorization of this piece in Xianfeng Year 6 places it squarely within the worst years of Shanghai's financial instability, when the Small Sword Society uprising had only recently been suppressed and foreign settlement banks were increasingly displacing Qing-sanctioned instruments.