5 Yuan Bank of Pei Hai

The Bank of Pei Hai (北海银行) was established in 1938 in the Shandong-Jiangsu border region as the financial arm of the Communist Party's Bohai base area. By 1944, when this note was issued, the bank was operating under wartime conditions — Japanese occupation forces actively suppressed base-area currencies, and notes like this one circulated in zones where possession could carry real risk.

The Shandong issues of this period are notoriously difficult to attribute precisely because production was decentralized across multiple small print shops to reduce vulnerability to raids. Variant catalogue suffixes like "A" in the S3562 series typically signal differences in printer, paper stock, or overprint rather than denomination or design.