Change
My first encounter with Chinese money occurred, naturally enough, on my first trip to China in 1997. The basic units in the currency is the yuan and the jiao, with one yuan equalling ten jiao. I thought it was kind of cool, as far as money goes. Each note was a different color, rather than the drab uniformity we must endure in the U.S. Instead of dead presidents, all of the Chinese currency had pictures of different ethnic groups or working classes. (The exception being the 100 yuan bill.) One oddity I discovered, once I got in country, was that not only did China issue jiao coins, but they also used jiao bills as well. I found this out the hard way, as I mistook the five jiao note for an older version of the five yuan one. The vendor to whom I was trying to give the bill wouldn't accept it. Fortunately I had a translator on hand who could give me a quick explanation.Anyway, fast forward to 2005. I return to China and am slightly disappointed that while Chinese currency retains its nice colors, the face of the notes now uniformly depict Mao Zedong. ("If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao...") Ah, well, what can you do? There was also a redesign of the jiao coins. However, once I got out here to the Yunnan hinterlands, I discovered that the jiao notes are still alive and well. In fact, I end up saving all my coins For trips to Kunming. I was mildly surprised to see that it was fairly easy to adapt to using bills rather than coins. (Of course, I was also adapting to not using my credit card, which was a bigger adjustment.)
So life went on, month after month. Then, back in December or so, I read an article about the change in China's currency. The article said that on April 1st, the jiao notes would be completely replaced with the coins. 'Twas an end of an era. I lamented the loss of the little bills, and stashed away a souvenir set for my scrapbook. As far as taking my old jiao notes to the bank to exchange for coins, I figured I'd just try to get rid of as many jiao notes as possible at the end of March and keep the remaining few as bookmarks.
Of course, the folks here are not cooperating. At the beginning of the year, I started seeing more coins in the tills of the local supermarkets, but that sort of petered out. Even the big new Tian Shun supermarket, which was using coins exclusively when it first opened, seemed to switch over to the bills. And it didn't change as April approached. Everybody was going along, using jiao notes as if nothing was happening. April 1st came and Yau Neih went out to the vendors to get breakfast. As I was starting to suspect, the pork and taters lady handed her a five jiao note in change. The bus driver accepted jiao notes as fare and even the grocery store still had the notes in the till. Ah, well. Maybe back in Beijing they've got rid of the paper, but here it's business as usual. It'll be interesting to see when the change actually takes place, assuming it does before we leave. Either way I'm prepared, with a stack of bills in my wallet and coins in my pocket.
posted by John @ 8:33 PM
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