A set of gold and silver commemorative coins featuring a great classical Chinese novel, A Dream of the Red Mansions, is to be issued on September 3, the People's Bank of China announced Monday.
The set of six includes one gold and five silver coins, all featuring a portrait of Cao Xueqin, author of the novel.
Their reverse sides feature designs drawn from well-known scenes in the novel.
The half-ounce gold coin has a face value of 200 yuan (about US$24.18), with 8,000 issued; each of the four one-ounce silver coins has a face value of 10 yuan (about US$1.2) with 38,000 issued; and the five-ounce silver coin has a face value of 50 yuan (about US$6.05), with 11,800 issued.
(Xinhua News Agency September 2, 2002)
