50 Yuan - Hell Banknote

Hell banknotes are votive offerings burned at Chinese funerals and ancestor veneration ceremonies so that the deceased may have spending money in the afterlife. The practice adapts an ancient tradition of burning paper goods — itself a substitute for the earlier burning of actual valuables — and by the late twentieth century had produced an entire parallel economy of ghost currency, complete with issuing "banks," denominations, and serial numbers mimicking real monetary instruments.

The Bank of Hades imprint became one of the most widely reproduced formats in the genre. The 1999 date places this within a period of significant commercial expansion in the manufacture and export of spirit money, particularly out of Hong Kong and Guangdong.