$0.0025

The two most commonly used coins in day-to-day purchases in Shanghai are one kuai and five mao. If a kuai were a dollar, a mao would be a dime. Since there is no sales tax here, an item at the store costs exactly what the price tag says, and an item at the market costs exactly what you talk the seller down to. To my great relief, Chinese shopkeepers have not yet discovered the wonderful little trick of subtracting a miniscule amount of money from the actual price to make a nice, round, 5 kuai into a ridiculous 4.99. So most things sold in convenience stores are priced in increments of five mao. Very handy, since there just so happens to be a 5 mao coin.

But it’s not always that easy. Every once in a while you get these items that fall somewhere between these nice 5 mao increments. So when I pay 2 1-kuai coins and one 5-mao coin for a bottle of coke that’s 2.3 kuai (actually kind of expensive, but whatever, I’m thirsty), I get two of these annoying little 1-mao coins in return. Now remember, this is Chinese currency, so it’s worth one eighth of the American counterpart. So when we talk about the difference between 2 kuai and 2 kuai 5 mao, it’s the the difference between 25 cents and 31 cents. I realize that it probably makes a difference to the shopkeeper who sells 50 of these bottles of coke a day and has to feed his family on the extra revenue he gets by charging the extra 3 mao, but I’m an American damnit, and those worthless little mao coins are annoying.

And it doesn’t stop there. The Chinese equivalent to the one-cent increment is the fen, worth one eighth of a cent. As far as I’ve seen, the one-fen coins are no longer in circulation; I haven’t seen one of them, or come across a price tag with a one-fen increment. In fact, I don’t remember seeing a price tag with anything more specific than a one-mao increment. But somewhere along the line, I managed to pick up two of these two-fen coins. Do the math, and one of these handy little pieces works out to be worth .0025 American dollars. Now think about how many of them you would need to buy a gumball.

On the other end of the spectrum, the highest denomination of paper money printed is the 100. So if you take any significant amount of money out of the bank, you end up carrying a fat wad of cash 20 bills thick. Also worth mentioning: the smallest denomination of paper money is 1 mao. No comment.

Anyway, instead of carrying the one mao coins around, I started a piggy bank with an empty water bottle. But this evening I asked myself, “What are you going to do at the end of the term when its time to go home and you have a water bottle full of one-mao coins?” A bottle of Tsingtao beer at the C-store downstairs costs 3.20 kuai. I have 38 mao coins. I think I’ll go have a beer.