50 Yuan

The Tsingtao City Bank was a municipal institution operating in what had recently been a German colonial concession, transferred to Japan after 1914 and only returned to Chinese administration in 1922 following the Washington Conference. This note was issued just two years into that restored sovereignty, when local banking infrastructure was still being rebuilt under unstable warlord-era conditions in Shandong.

Municipal banks of this period rarely achieved wide circulation beyond their immediate locality. Notes from minor city banks in 1920s China were frequently refused outside their issuing district, which kept circulation volumes low and attrition rates modest — surviving examples are scarce nonetheless, as many institutions collapsed during the financial turmoil of the late 1920s.