China’s famous for fakes and fake money is a huge problem. Every store has a little “money checking” machines that they run 100 rmb notes through to make sure they’re real, but I didn’t know they were so careful about the smaller bills too.
My friend got some fried rice from a little stall outside my school. He gave them a big bill, they gave him change. One of the bills was a 20rmb note. When he tried to use it at another store later, the lady paused, looked at it, ran it through the counterfeit machine and handed it back to him. (Or, more confusingly she just slid it back on the counter leaving my friend to kinda figure out what was going on by himself. She didn’t even say anything!)
My friend then tried to use the 20 next time he was buying rice from the same guy who gave it to him. But that guy refused it too. (My friend wanted to yell at him in Chinese, as this guy gave him the bad cash, but doesn’t quite have the language skills yet.)
The amazing thing to me, is that the fake looks really good. I mean, I don’t handle money everyday but I’m still a little surprised that these people could see it was a fake at just a glance. Can you guess which one is fake?
Counterfeit Money in China
Unfortunately I don’t have a 20RMB in my wallet at the moment so I could compare, but my guess is the one below is the fake one.
I think I’ve once gotten a fake 20RMB as well, but wasn’t completely sure and one shop did accept it. Luckily haven’t run into any bigger fake notes.
Yeah! Good guess! How did you know? Because the colors are less vibrant? The note had a slightly different feel, which is how I think maybe they noticed right away, but still, they are pretty damn close.
I thought the upper one is fake.
My guess was going to be the bottom one as well. Mao looks a little different.