5 Yuan Tuned Bells, Silver Bullion

The Tuned Bells series drew on the 1978 discovery of the Marquis Yi of Zeng's tomb in Hubei province, where archaeologists unearthed a set of 65 bronze bells — a bianzhong — dating to 433 BC and still capable of producing accurate pitches across a five-octave range. The find rewrote assumptions about early Chinese musical sophistication and generated sustained cultural interest that the People's Bank channeled into a run of commemorative silver issues through the 1990s.

The 1994 piece is the third release in that run, struck at .900 fineness rather than the .999 used by most contemporaneous Chinese silver bullion — a specification that distinguishes it from the Panda series issued the same year.