A little wonder, every day
Paper money emerged in China about a thousand years ago
AI-generated illustrative reconstruction of an early Chinese paper note in a Song-era market office. It is not an authentic artifact or a reproduction of legible historical writing. Generated with OpenAI image generation; no external source or reuse license applies.
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Paper money did not appear three thousand years ago. China’s National Museum traces early paper money to jiaozi—merchant receipts that emerged in Sichuan in the late tenth century and whose issuance was later organised by the Song government. That was about a thousand years ago.