Coins of the Realm

When the defeated Nationalists(KMT, Nationalist's Party) retreated from the mainland to Taiwan from the Communists(PRC, People's Republic of China) they took with then the legacy of the ROC(Republic of China) that defeated the Qing Dynasty in 1911. So many ROC(Taiwan) documents assume 1911 is year 1 and all documents use this numbering. In particular, we are in year 100(2011) according to the ROC calendar.

This is the case with coins in Taiwan. Every since I've been coming to Taiwan,(almost 30 years now) there have been basically four coins in circulation.


 1  NT$ 1 yuan                    Chaing Kai-Shek(Retreated from Mainland 1949)
 5  NT$ 5 yuan                    Chaing Kai-Shek(Retreated from Mainland 1949)
10 NT$ 10 yuan                  Chaing Kai-Shek(Retreated from Mainland 1949)
50 NT$ 50 yuan                  Sun Yat-Sen(founder of ROC, 2011)

at 100 NT$ they start using bills. Here is the obverse(front side) of the current 4 coins.

And the reverse(back image) is

It is actually hard to take these pictures as the coins are new and shiny, then the camera reflects too much light. I don't know how to take these pictures. I know that to use natural light and no flash is better. But there must be a better way.

I have never seen the 20 NTD(New Taiwanese Dollars) coin and I rarely saw the 1/2 NTD coin, when we were in HsinChu, more than 15 years ago, I collected them because they were so rare.

So it was a big surprise for me when I saw some new 10 NTD this time in Tainan. Here are three coins I have collected here in Tainan for the Year 99(2010):

 
 And there reverse side we have,

The rightmost coin is the coin of the past 30 years but the leftmost coins are new. The leftmost is Chiang Ching-Kuo the son of Chiang Kai-Shek. After his father died, he paved the way for Taiwan to be come a democratic Republic. I believe he is a true hero for Taiwan, even though his father was a tyrant.

I had never heard of the middle character of the three 1999 coins. He is Chiang Wei Shui, Taiwanese Nationalist who promoted Taiwanese nationalism during the period of Japanese occupation.