5 Yuan

The Bank of Taiwan functioned as a de facto central bank for the Republic of China government after its retreat to Taiwan in 1949 — the island had no separate central bank until 1961. This note was printed entirely in-house at the bank's own facility, an arrangement that gave Taipei direct control over currency production at a politically sensitive moment when any dependence on foreign printers would have carried real strategic risk.

P#121 is among the smaller-format issues of the 1955 series, with a watermark as the sole mechanical security feature — modest by contemporary international standards, but consistent with the austerity of Taiwan's post-retreat monetary infrastructure.