Nao de China

Mexican women also immigated to China to marry Chinese men.
At least that was the story my mother told me. She said the prospective brides were led to believe they would live a certain way, but that many wound up as concubines, or worse.

Supposedly, average Mexicans raised millions of silver pesos to repatriate the women who arrived in Acapulco in ships with stories to tell.

Pancho Villa was notorious for his anti-Chinese fervor. I've heard he executed all Chinese in his territory.

When I was in Hong Kong and Macau I saw many Mexican pesos with "chop" marks. The Chinese, as well as Persians, Arabs and many other people in Asia and Africa used the peso as their currency.

They hammered into the coins chop marks, incised markings to indicate they were currency in their particular jurisdiction.

Around 1905 Mexico changed the legend on its coins to "Estados Unidos Mexicanos.," and switched to the current peso.

But people all over the world believed "Republica Mexicana" meant pure silver. So Mexico continued, still continues, to issue Ocho Reales silver coins labeled Republica Mexicana for export with the date 1898.

Many people use the silver Ocho Reales for body adornment. Necklaces of money, such as they wear in Burma, and Thailand. It's their form of savings.