Money

The Chinese money is not too hard to understand. They operate with a base 10 system using the Yuan. They also call it the "quai," the same way we say buck, instead of dollar. Although Chairman Mao was such a bad man (read Wild Swans - an amazing book about China between 1921-1978) he is still very present. 

He is on the money.

Then there's the whole inflation thing. The exchange rate is about 6.5 Yuan to the $. What it's done for me is made me a cheap skate. I know that it isn't that many dollars, but I still see high numbers and then spend less.

This is our receipt from Pizza Hut last night. Looks like a lot, huh. No. It was about 30$. We treated Yimi to a western dinner because she helped us get me a cell phone. We would have been lost without her.



To encourage the businesses to turn in the receipts to the Tax Bureau, they hand out these scratch and win tickets. You get 2-4 when you purchase dinners. We hhad a few. Most say "Thanks for trying." Then last night when we were with Yimi, I got a winning one. I won 10 Yuan. Yay!! It's possible to win between 10 and 30,000 Yuan. 10 is most common. It's like $1.15. I felt pretty lucky.

So here is how big China is about receipts and stamps. The yellow ones are from the purchase of my cell phone, but not the service. We did that somewhere else. All the ones on the left with the stamps and little blue logos are from Daniel changing his USD in his CCB bank account to RMB. Yes 9 receipts. All with stamps. They seem to think that the more stamps the more official. They also carbon copy everything. They haven't even thought about going paperless. Funny though, they are deffintely on the "green" band wagon.

So there you go. One more glimpse into my life here.