5 Yuan

The Provincial Bank of Honan was one of several Chinese provincial institutions that turned to the American Bank Note Company during the late Qing and early Republican periods, when domestic printing infrastructure could not reliably produce notes resistant to counterfeiting. ABNC's New York facility supplied intaglio-printed sheets to dozens of Chinese issuers simultaneously, which creates an odd genealogy — competing provincial banks, some barely solvent, all sharing the same Manhattan pressroom.

1918 places this note squarely in the warlord era, when Honan province changed military and political hands repeatedly. Provincial bank notes from this period often circulated at steep discounts beyond their home territory, if they circulated at all.