Money Matters

The Chinese currency RMB yuan are issued in the following denominations: one, two, five, ten, twenty, fifty and one hundred yuan; one, two and five jiao; and one, two and five fen. All face values have paper notes; and 1 yuan (kuai), 5jiao(mao), 1jiao(mao), 5 fen, 2 fen, 1 fen have coins. Now the smallest unit is jiao(mao) since the unit fen has come out of use for more than ten years.

Money Exchange in China
Currency exchange are available in the airport; Four or five star hotels in major cities offers money exchange service for their guests; or you can just go to nearby bank for exchange, but don’t forget to take your passport, which is required;

When you exchange money, the bank staff will usually give you big notes in 100 or 50 denominations; you can ask them for some small change which would be convenient to use at some little shops or paying taxi fees.

Credit Card & ATM
Credit cards can be used for withdrawing money, shopping in most major Chinese cities; for withdrawing money from ATM, just check whether the symbols or logo of the credit card are shown on the machine.

There’s a limit for withdrawing money from ATM, around 20,000 RMB one day.

If you press the wrong passwords over 3 times, your card will be swallowed by the ATM; just show your ID card or passport to the bank staff and get it back with their help.

Other things:
1. Traveler’s checks are the safest way to take money with you on your holidays.

2. China also suffers from counterfeiters like other countries; so when you receive big note (100 /50 yuan), make sure the note is of real.

Below are some easy tips to identify real and fake China cashes:
1. The authentic RMB make a ringing sound when snapped it which resulted from special material used;

2. There’s a security line in the middle of 5, 10, 20, 50 & 100 notes(the fifth version);

3. The most common way to identify Chinese money is by the color and pattern as they are very hard to follow and duplicate, and the counterfeit notes are usually too fuzzy, meaning that the images and colors are not so sharp;

4. The watermark is another effective way to identify the fake banknotes. Usually the watermark on the fake money is also not clear. The real ones look quite distinct.