100 - Hongwu 1328-1398AD

This note commemorates Zhu Yuanzhang, the Hongwu Emperor, founder of the Ming Dynasty — a man born a landless peasant who buried his parents in borrowed ground during a famine before eventually overthrowing the Yuan and establishing the longest-ruling ethnic Han dynasty in Chinese history. The Ming court is also directly relevant to banknote history: Zhu Yuanzhang's government issued the Dà Míng Bǎochāo, one of the most ambitious paper currency experiments of the medieval world, which ultimately collapsed under uncontrolled overprinting and refusal of the state to accept its own notes in tax payment.