When ever the KMT isn’t in charge, talks of removing KMT dictators off of Taiwan’s currency pops up. That’s how we end up with dictator free 500, 1000, and the very rare 2000 NTD notes, they were redesigned during the CSB years.
Some of us are unfortunately old enough to remember when they looked like this:
I much prefer the current version with kids animals and baseball.
Since SYS and CKS still occupy a side of the 100 NTD, and most coinage, DPP legislator Gao Jyh-peng is pushing for revamping their design.
Some people are answering this call by putting out their own currency design:
Some probably would call this a waste of money, but if this transitional justice thing is really going to play out eventually, then we might as well waste the money when the cost is relatively low.
So the call to redesign the currency hasn’t stopped, and now there’s a full on design competition. Visit the link below to vote for your favorite designs.
I thought $200nt bills were rare but I found my local Taiwan cooperative bank ATM has an option for $200 bills so I always select it just to be different when buying stuff. Makes the cashier look twice.
The bills always come out of the ATM freshly printed and no wrinkles.
According to the older Shida audio visual Chinese books, the baseball currency memorialized Taiwan performance in little league World Series, an event in which both the Japanese and Taiwanese cheated by fielding teenagers as if they were 12 year olds.
Another tidbit from those books was that rarely did anyone selling something ever smile. Instead, seller just barked ‘what do you want?’ But McDonald’s brought to Taiwan the idea of smiling at customer.