For those of you unfamiliar with unfamiliar with Bamboo Tallies... The loss of governmental authority during the Qing dynasty caused a shortage of currency during the turbulent period of the Republic of China. Private parties began issuing “Bamboo Tallies” to offset the shortages. They were produced by banks, local business and trading firms, exchange offices, merchant guilds, and playhouses. In short, they were the Chinese equivalent of US Civil War Tokens, but unlike their American counterparts, the bamboo tokens remained in use from 1870 to about 1940. The only character I can make out on this example is wén (文), which was the precursor to the yuan, so perhaps this tally is denominated as a certain number of wén? Any help reading the rest of the token would be much appreciated!
I don't know what the symbols mean, but that would be cool to have. Its crazy that they used bamboo for currency... It was probably counterfeited a lot. Wait, its China. Of course it got counterfeited.
Ok, here's my guesses: 伍 (wu3) -- financial version of the numeral five These are special versions of numerals which are harder to change to other characters. For example, 1 = 一 can have strokes added to change it to many other characters, but the financial version (壹) is hard to modify. 抬 (tai2) -- to lift/carry. Not sure if this has a special financial meaning 文 (wen2) -- Chinese currency unit "wen". This would apply to copper coins even as late as the Qing Dynasty. Same character also used for Japanese "mon" and Korean "mun". 王文生 (Wang2 Wen2-Sheng1) -- I'm guessing this is the issuer's name. Wang is an extremely common surname, and 文生 might be a man's name. So probably, "Wang Wen-Sheng's marker for 5 copper cash" or some such. Maybe.
