The Chinese Fibonacci Series 25 Gold This work contains the first terms of the Fibonacci series, which Philip LeBlanc represents as an ancient Chinese counting method dating back to the 3rd century BCE, centuries before the abacus. This method of counting on bamboo poles (i.e., counting chips) was performed by counting and moving small bamboo poles on a flat surface. This counting method of adding and summing to 10 consists of two sets of 18 symbols in the form of two groups: one group (vertical chips) represents the digits, hundreds, etc., and the other group (horizontal chips) represents the tens, thousands, hundreds of thousands, etc.