50 Fen - Guangxu

Yunnan's silver coinage of the late Qing period reflects the province's uncomfortable proximity to both the Burmese border and the French Indochina monetary zone, where Mexican and French trade dollars had entrenched themselves in local commerce. The Yunnan provincial mint struck this issue specifically to compete with those foreign coins for dominance in southwestern trade networks — a battle the Qing government was losing almost everywhere by 1908.

Guangxu died that same year, in circumstances still debated: he predeceased the Empress Dowager Cixi by a single day, and modern forensic analysis of his remains has confirmed arsenic poisoning.