NewChinaHand: Another Brick in the Wall
Most of our readers will have heard of the Great Wall of China. Hopefully. But did you know this last week there was a Great Wall of hard CASH?
Villagers in Sichuan Province handed out more than 13 MILLION YUAN (about 2mil US) in bonuses to 340 households before the Chinese New Year holiday, all in 100 YUAN-DENOMINATED BILLS!!!
That meant a 2M-LONG, 156KG WALL OF NOTES that villagers slept on to guard the night before delivery. Apparently it wasn’t that comfortable.
This story isn’t that surprising to anyone who’s been in China for a while: China is a cash-rich society with a (slowly) developing banking system. People pay for houses and cars with carrier bags full of notes and, certainly in rural areas, bank accounts are not as common as in the West, credit cards even rarer. Cash, as the saying goes, is king, and the largest note is the 100 yuan, about 16.5 USD.
What might be surprising, though, is that it’s still possible to turn an impressive buck through farming. China’s economic power is usually linked to its urban centres, industrial and manufacturing output. These farmers made their (literal) cash through investing in a rural cooperative.
What would you do with a wall of cash? Play racketball? Graffiti? Lemmings? Comment below and let us know. And then go about getting one. Dutifully. And share it. With us.
Laters!
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Selected Sources:
The Guest Room 