KUBLAI KHAN.

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Fourteenth-century block for printing banknotes. An artefact of 14th-century Chinese printing, used to produce the style of paper banknotes that so astonished Marco Polo during his travels in China.Paper money is recorded in China as early as the Song dynasty (960-1279). In 1287, the Yuan dynasty emperor Kublai Khan issued a new paper currency, the Zhiyuanchao, after the depreciation of his earlier notes. Backed by silver, the currency had 11 denominations, ranging from 5 to 2,000 wen, and remained in circulation almost continuously until the middle of the next century.Polo was captivated on his encounter with paper money in the emperor's capital: "With these pieces of paper, made as I have described, he causes all payments on his own account to be made; and he makes them to pass current universally over all his kingdoms and provinces and territories, and whithersoever his power and sovereignty extends. And nobody, however important he may think himself, dares to refuse them on pain of death" (Yule's translation, pp. 379). Even in Polo's era, Kublai had taken to overprinting notes, the Venetian observing that the emperor possessed the "Secret of Alchemy in perfection" and that "the money he pays away costs him nothing at all" (Yule's translation, pp. 378 and 380). In the decades following his travels, this imperial policy and rampant counterfeiting led to massive depreciation. By the time the Zhiyuanchao was withdrawn (in the perpetual crisis that marred the Yuan dynasty's fi

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