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The 10 yuan coin was issued by the People's Bank of China to mark the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese lunar calendar; release began on 15 December 2023 and public exchange ran through January 2024. New Year commemorative 贺岁 coins are released ahead of the Spring Festival and issued at face value.
Image description
The main subject of the reverse is a dragon, rendered as a combination of traditional jianzhi paper-cutting and the decorative idiom of the nianhua New Year print. The background of the composition is formed by festive lanterns and the lingzhi mushroom — a Daoist symbol of longevity and immortality; the cyclical year mark "甲辰" appears on the left. The obverse carries the inscriptions "中国人民银行" (People's Bank of China), the denomination "10元", the romanisation "SHIYUAN" and the year of issue "2024", set against a tuanhua ornament in the form of a rounded floral rosette.
Historical context
The Dragon (龙, lóng) is the fifth sign of the 12-year Chinese zodiac cycle and the only mythical creature among the twelve; 2024 corresponds to the cyclical pair 甲辰 (jiǎchén) — the year of the Wood Dragon. The image is among the oldest in Chinese culture: the C-shaped jade dragons of the Hongshan culture in Inner Mongolia date to the fourth millennium BC, while the shell-laid dragon figure from a burial at Xishuipo near Puyang is roughly six thousand years old. The dragon was conceived from the outset as a composite being: the classic list of "nine resemblances" (九似), recorded in the Song-dynasty treatise Erya Yi, combines in it the antlers of a deer, the head of a camel, the neck of a snake, the scales of a carp, the claws of an eagle and the paws of a tiger. As master of rain and the watery element the dragon also became a symbol of imperial power — the five-clawed dragon was the exclusive prerogative of the ruling house under the Ming and Qing — and the Chinese still call themselves "descendants of the dragon" (龙的传人).
Numismatic significance
The issue belongs to the 贺岁普通纪念币 series of circulating New Year coins, which the People's Bank of China strikes in mass mintages and releases at face value through advance reservation and exchange at banks. The 2024 mintage is 120 million pieces, of which 10,000 are retained for the historical currency archive. The Dragon is the most popular sign of the Chinese zodiac, so these issues are taken up fastest and most often become the first coin in a collection; the Year of the Dragon is the tenth coin of the second cycle of the bimetallic zodiac series, opened by the Goat in 2015 and closed by the Horse in 2026. A complete set of twelve is valued appreciably higher than individual pieces, and the coin itself is traditionally given at the Spring Festival as a wish for strength, success and prosperity.