Lately, I’ve noticed spray-painted advertisements for fake currency. Also, public opinion now holds that one should only give a taxi driver as close to exact change as possible, since handing over a 100 rmb note will usually result in a portion of fake change. I have been specially warned by concerned friends because I fit the profile of the forgers’ mark – foreign and travels between Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Indeed, forgers approach taxi drivers who are waiting to pick-up fares at the Huanggang border.
According to friends, the forgers can afford to be so blatent because the police have neither the time nor the inclination to take care of something that marks should be able to handle themselves. They point to cashiers, shopkeepers, and tellers as examples of people who check to see if a bill is genuine before accepting it. Ordinary people, they say, must take the same precautions.
Shenzhen Noted 
I never had this problem when I lived in Shenzhen, and I used taxis very regularly. It sounds as though this problem is recent, right? Or was I just extremely lucky?
I was once handed a fake 50 RMB note in Yangshuo, Ganxi Province, though – an incident I described in my book as follows:
China, like much of the world, is a place of increasing wealth, but growing inequalities. I was reminded of this earlier in the day before getting the bus to Fuli, when I was robbed of fifty yuan by a local store owner. I needed to buy a sun hat, and came across one that I liked for only six yuan. Not having any change, I gave the woman a fifty yuan note – the only fifty yuan note that I had at the time, and which I had received in change about thirty minutes earlier from one of the local travel agents. The woman in the hat store took my fifty yuan note and quickly disappeared into the back room, only to reappear a moment later to hand me back ‘my’ note, which she claimed was a fake one. Sure, the note she handed me back clearly was a fake one, but it wasn’t the note that I originally gave her. She had swapped it, and a few hours down at the local police station solved nothing. Without hard evidence, no charges could be laid. I was simply told, in English by one of the local officers, that ‘all Chinese people are very honest and never steal’ and that the circulation of fake money in the town had only become a recent problem, brought about by foreigners like myself.
I was happy to write off the money, after all, it was worth less than ten Australian dollars. But Xiaojing was enraged, and was determined to give the woman a lesson by dragging her down to the police station to give statements, to defend her version of events against ours. The woman was clearly put out, and had no doubt lost a little face.
In an area where most of the villages don’t even have running tap water and flushing toilets, it is easy to see why it is in China that so many desperate young villagers leave their farms in search of a better life in the cities, and why so many of them resort to petty crime in order to gain for themselves the new status symbols more easily acquired by their wealthier, more educated cousins in the cities. It is easy too, to understand why even police officers in a small town like Yangshuo should feel a certain degree of contempt for the tourists whose wealth adds so much to the prosperity of their town.
A place like Yangshuo might seem idyllic to many, and in many ways it is. But poverty exists here, alongside the new wealth that visitors bring, and the growing inequality and the social implications of this for a small town like Yangshuo speaks volumes about both the strengths and the limitations of human beings everywhere.
Hi Mark,
There’s been fake currency in Shenzhen for a while. What seems new is the blatency of advertizing for and purchasing of forged money.
Also, your experience shows Chinese police blaming foreigners for the situation of fake currency. In contrast, this small slice of Shenzhen life points to Chinese police shrugging their shoulders: Everyone knows fake currency exists. What are you doing to protect yourself? More ironically, I can imagine one or two officers making the argument that the problem of forged money IS our foreign fault. Not because we’re richer, but because we don’t take the time to carefully check the change we receive! (Well, I can imagine a Fat Bird skit going there…)
Thanks for your response Mary. It seems as though local law enforcement agencies, overwhelmed by the problem, and perhaps lacking the necessary resources, are encouraging a kind of social Darwinianism – each individual should fend for themselves, should take full responsibility for making sure that they aren’t ripped off or cheated, while those that manufacture and distribute forged money are left free to advertise!
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I am rowan atkinson. I most like this function. I agree withn with you. I never had this problem when I lived in Shenzhen, and I used taxis very regularly. It sounds as though this problem is recent, right? Or was I just extremely lucky?Thanks for your response Mary. It seems as though local law enforcement agencies, overwhelmed by the problem, and perhaps lacking the necessary resources.
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