page_title: Piaohao
section_title: Banknotes issued by piaohao
hierarchical_section_title: Piaohao / Banknotes issued by piaohao
caption_attribution_description: English: A remittance note issued by a Piaohao ("Shanxi bank") during the reign of the Guangxu Emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty.
context_page_description: Piaohao, also known as piaozhuang, huihao, or huiduizhuang, in Mandarin Chinese, or Shanxi banks or Shansi banks in English, were a type of bank that existed in China during the Qing dynasty until approximately 1952.
  The piaohao were started by merchants from the province of Shanxi who were often originally engaged in other businesses before they entered finance. The piaohao were mostly active in northern China while the qianzhuang were mostly active in the south. The piaohao continued to be the dominant financial institutions of China until 1900 when more modern commercial banks started being created by both the imperial and provincial governments, and the qianzhuang benefitted more from their close ties with foreign banks operating in Chinese treaty ports. During their heyday the piaohao had over 400 branches operating across the territory of the Qing dynasty and branches in other countries like Japan, Korea, Russia, India, and Singapore.
  After 1912 practically all piaohao either closed or were transformed into more modern types of banks.
context_section_description: During the late Ming dynasty period, Chinese people already widely used letters of exchange or money orders known as huipiao (匯票 or 會票) as a means of remittance (匯兌, huìduì or 撥兌, bōduì). 
  By the 19th century paper money had been long abandoned in China and various types of commodity currencies such as silver sycees denominated in taels had become the standard currency for large transactions. The tael had regionally varying weights dependent on which city it was being traded in, for example the Guangzhou tael was 37.5 grams of silver, the Shanghai tael was 33.9 grams of silver, and the Customs tael was 37.8 grams of silver. The conversion rates between common tael types were well‐known among Chinese traders and merchants, and local units would take precedent unless a particular weight or purity was specified. The Spanish dollar (or "piece of eight"), which was a common currency in coastal China, contained 25.56 grams of pure silver, this made 1 Chinese tael roughly 1.5 Spanish dollars. 
  The monthly interest rates was usually 2-3 li for deposits and 6-7 li for loans. Monthly interest rates were calculated based on permillage (‰) while annual interest were based on percentages (%). There exists the possibility that the papers issued by the piaohao were discounted when traded, but there is no evidence to support this hypothesis. 
  Some piaohao issued their own paper bills, which were known as duitie (兌帖), qitie (期帖), qiantie (錢帖), and yinpiao (銀票), with different functions (many of these banknotes represented letters of exchange). These banknotes were seen as "making good for the missing of a kind of paper money or paper currency in the monetary system of the (early) Qing dynasty period", as well as for the failed Da-Qing Baochao and Hubu Guanpiao banknotes issued during the reign of the Xianfeng Emperor. 
  The piaohao traded in currencies and conducted themselves in currency exchange, at the time there were twenty different forms of bulk silver currency circulating in China at the time, each of these currencies had a different weight and percentage of silver purity. The piaohao issued two types of draft bills, one was for "ordinary customers" and the other for "longstanding customers", the bills issued for "ordinary customers" tells the branch office to use a specific type of unit without informing the customer, while the bills for the "longstanding customers" explicitly defines which unit is being used.
caption: A banknote issued by a piaohao in the year Guangxu 16 (1890).
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