Broken Money

Setting up a bank account at the bank the school told us to set-up with was an experience. The school actually took most of and helped assist with the Chinese forms. That was an interesting hour. I had some US $ that I wanted to put in so that we could access it when needed with our newly issued debit card. We were taken to a room on the side of the main teller area that was labeled VIP they gave us drinks and had us wait. When I gave them my hundred dollar bills they brought in a special bank examiner. Each bill was carefully scrutinized for about a minute then they ran them through a machine they made a stack of those they would accept and those they would not. They handed back 4 hundreds and told me they were broken. I could not see why but upon closer examination some had small nicks in the edge of the bills. So I guess I had broken money. We exchanged it with the school and were able to get it into the bank and exchanged for Chinese RMB. Total time about 3 hours.