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Fran Lu

Nearly 50 years after she featured on the renminbi banknote, a woman who became known as “one yuan girl” is back in the spotlight due to a recent viral video of her.
An influencer in southwestern China’s Guizhou province posted the video on November 26. It featured 65-year-old Shi Naiyin.
Shi is an ordinary peasant woman of the Dong ethnic minority in Congjiang county, Guizhou.
However, her nickname, “one yuan girl”, is known nationwide.

At the age of 16, Shi went to the market in a town near her village with her friends. She was wearing Dong people’s traditional clothing, including a pair of eye-catching silver earrings.
While buying embroidery needles and threads at a stall, Shi felt her arm being pulled by a man.
The man, who was in his 30s, smiled at her and asked her to stand still with her face to the side.
Shi was confused but still did it.
The man then started drawing her.
The incident soon slipped Shi’s mind and she told no one about it.

Shi said it was not until later when people kept telling her that she looked like the girl on the renminbi banknote that she remembered the incident.
In 1988, China released the new one-yuan banknote as part of the fourth series of renminbi.
The note features two women, one from the Dong ethnic minority and the other from the Yao ethnic group.
The man that Shi encountered was painter Hou Yimin, who spent three years in China’s southwestern region to observe ethnic groups’ decorative styles, according to Chinese media outlet Hongxing News.
Shi Wenzhang, a government official in Qingyun town, to which Shi’s village is affiliated, told Hongxing News in 2017 that they knew all along the “one yuan girl” was from Qingyun based on her hairstyle and earrings.
It was not until 2010 that they heard people saying the girl looks like Shi Naiyin, that they finally found her.
By this time, China has already released its fifth series of renminbi. All the banknotes featured Mao Zedong’s portrait.
Shi was not excited when she found out that she was featured on the banknote.
“We still need to live our life as usual,” she reportedly said.

She was the oldest of six children in her family. She never studied and began working for the family at a young age.
She was famous in the village for her hair, which was as black as ebony, and was nicknamed “flower of the village”.
At 23, she married a man her parents chose.
They practised zouhun, or “walking marriage”, a custom that sees couples living separately for two years before forming a family.
Shi has a son and a daughter who work away from home.
After Shi was reported to be the “one yuan girl”, she has received letters asking her for financial help from people who think she must be rich because of her fame.
Shi said her family never took advantage of her fame to ask for government allowances.


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China ‘one yuan girl’ featured in old renminbi banknote located after nearly 50 years

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Shi, whose eye-catching earrings caught the attention of an artist all those years ago, pictured wearing a similar pair recently. Photo: news.china.com

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Simple village girl from the country’s Dong ethnic minority is now a humble mother of two; her family have never tried to cash in on fame


Simple village girl from the country’s Dong ethnic minority is now a humble mother of two; her family have never tried to cash in on fame.


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China ‘one yuan girl’ featured in old renminbi banknote located after nearly 50 years

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Simple village girl from the country’s Dong ethnic minority is now a humble mother of two; her family have never tried to cash in on fame

Simple village girl from the country’s Dong ethnic minority is now a humble mother of two; her family have never tried to cash in on fame