5 Yuan Farmer's Bank of Chung-Chou, front proof

The Farmer's Bank of Chung-Chou was a provincial institution operating in Henan, one of several regional banks that continued issuing their own notes well into the late 1940s even as the Nationalist government's own currency was collapsing under hyperinflation. By 1948, the fabi and the gold yuan certificate were both in freefall, and provincial paper had effectively ceased to function as anything other than emergency stopgap money.

This is a front proof — struck from the production plate but never issued, retained for archival or approval purposes. The "s" suffix in the Pick reference confirms specimen status. Proofs from this issuer are substantially rarer in the market than circulated examples, largely because the bank's records and stocks were disrupted by the Communist advance through Henan in 1948.