Dit verhaal werd me verteld door Wenbo Tang, in China over een eland als bankbiljet, dit zijn haar woorden:
The story of emperor Hanwu as following:
The year 114BC of Dynasty Han, Emperor Hanwu embarked upon a series of wars against the Hun rule which consumed huge amounts of material and food.
Both the natural and man-made disasters in those years made the country very poor,people couldn’t live. Especially in that winter.
For the support of war and increasing financial revenue Emperor WuHan made a fiscal reform. The issue of paper money was one of the measures he took.
At that time no paper could be made as a money like now. He had been puzzling about this problem. One day when he was riding and shooting in his big garden (most Chinese Emperors were good at riding and shooting in history) suddenly,a white moose came out of nowhere.
The emperor kept a white moose as a pet in the palace. He shot the white moose unintentionally and he asked someone to pick it up. He noticed the cover of white moose was so natural and clear and as he was thinking aload his retinue Tang Zhang advised the Emperor “why not use it as the material of paper money?”
The Emperor was very happy hearing that and wanted to try. He asked someone to cut the cover in square parts. Then they embroidered color pictures (sun,moon,star,mountain,dragon,plants) on to the cover. One white moose banknotepaper was worth 40.000 Euro at that time so a Moose would have been worth millions.
The moose was a precious creature in the Imperial palace in the history and the paper money was very difficult to copy.
here is no knowing when this cover paper money was used but it had an assured place in history.