5000 Yuan Tung Pei Bank of China, purple

The Tung Pei Bank of China was established in 1946 under the Chinese Communist Party's Northeast Bureau to serve the liberated zones of Manchuria — territories wrested from Kuomintang control and, before that, from Japanese occupation. By 1948, when this note was issued, the Communist forces had effectively consolidated the Northeast, and the bank's currency was functioning as the dominant medium in the region ahead of the formal establishment of the People's Bank of China in December of that year.

The S-prefix Pick reference signals a regional or provisional classification — this note circulated in a war economy, not a stable one, and high denominations like 5000 Yuan reflect the inflationary pressure that had been running through Chinese currency since the mid-1940s.