Currency Exchange

A month after Joey and I got married, we hoofed it off to China to teach English for a month. It was a great month filled with getting minorly lost, eating some unusual food, Joey getting exceptionally sick, making great friends with our students (and the most physical game of Monopoly I can recall ever playing), and spending oodles of Chinese Yuan since the exchange rate was so bad. (We got like 8 Yuan per dollar, so we had bills coming out our ears.)

That being said, I'm very familiar with a 100 Yuan bill. It looks like this.Considering that picture has "copyright" watermarked all over it I'll probably get taken out by the Chinese government now. But I am unafraid. Anyway, it's clearly a Chinese bill as you can tell from both the characters, the pinyin and the big picture of Mao.

Quite to my advantage, I studied Mandarin Chinese for nearly two semesters when I went to Iowa State. I say nearly two semesters because I dropped it halfway through the 2nd semester because I was one of two people who wasn't natively Asian and had a rudimentary grasp of the language already. (What this means to me today is that I can recognize very basic Chinese characters but really nothing else.)

All this to say that I know what Chinese money looks like. And, with my very rudimentary grasp of Mandarin Chinese, I can even read that it says "Chinese Yuan" on the currency. Not what I'd figure to be handy life skills, but today they came in handy.

I had to go to the bank to exchange some foreign currency today. I glanced at it and saw that it was, in fact, Chinese Yuan. I stood in line with the teller and waited for 10 minutes as a very expressive short man (he was shorter than me, so that is very short) while he asked the teller what she did for Valentines Day and scoffed that she hadn't chosen a more expensive restaurant for dinner.

When it was finally my turn I slid the envelope with the foreign currency across the cool marble counter. The teller opened the envelope, turned the money around and flicked it a few times. I thought she was checking for authenticity but after a few moments of this she asked, "What country is this?"

"It's Chinese Yuan," I told her. I handed her the receipt that had the currency code on it.

"No, it's not. It doesn't look right." She went to go get her book of foreign currencies and I began to second guess my Chinese-reading abilities and recollection of what Chinese currency looked like.

After 10 minutes of watching her page through the currency book and ask questions like "What other countries might this be from" I leaned over the counter and took back one of the bills. There, written right on it in both pin-yin (anglicized Chinese) and Chinese characters it very clearly said "Chinese Yuan". I had not been wrong.

"This says 'Chinese Yuan' right on it, see?" I pointed to the writing and the teller looked at me with an annoyed expression on her face. I was getting tired of standing there waiting for her to recognize the picture in the 150 page currency guide. "Can you please just look at the page with the Chinese currency?"

She hadn't done that yet.

Reluctantly she flipped back to the Chinese section of the book and - shocker! - there was the picture she had been searching for. She huffed and closed the book quickly so as to ensure I hadn't spotted the picture. But I had.

Shortly the transaction was complete and she handed me my money and refused to look me in the eye. "I think it was Chinese Yuan," she mumbled.

It was.

Sometimes it feels good to be vindicated because most of the other times in my life I'm wrong.