A Gold Leaf from the 1940's

Stephen Tai
Feb.12, 1998

The shown gold piece, sized 69x38mm, weighted 12g, inscribed with: Se Ju Chi Jing Yeh ('100% pure gold leaf'), Jing Ser Pai ('The Lion Trade Mark'), should be existed in a year no later than 1949.

In Chinese long currency history, actually, gold has never been treated as currency by people, yet, a treasury saved for rainy days, except for certain special occasions such as in the case of war, economic depression, monetary depreciation, it would be occasionally chosen as exchange media. However, when the situation being recovered, gold, right at once, retires from the circulation and remains as treasury.
During the Civil War between the Republicans and the Communists after World War II all legal tenders in this country were malfunctioned. In a very short time, their worth were not even more than 1/10,000,000 of their par values, old silver coins, gold bars and leafs, at the time, were called upon by the people, to be served as trading media temporarily. After the Communists had won the war in 1949, those precious metal soon disappeared from the markets.

Official Gold Bar in 1945
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