Matt's Shanghai

Bank of China

If you've followed along with my entries, you'll notice that the most amazing thing to me is the Bank of China. It seems that I always run into to something when I'm there.

My visit yesterday was no different. I'm sitting in the waiting area, looking for my number to pop up above a teller. Number 324 is called up, a man walks up with a brief case and pulls out two huge stacks of crisp U.S. $100 bills. In fact, after watching the machine count all of them, there were 150 bills. Where did he get $15,000 U.S. dollars in cash???

A lot of expats here use the 1to5 rule... meaning that if I earn US $5/hr. doing my job, the Chinese would earn US$1/hr. doing the same job. Using that rule, this would be like someone walking into Bank of America with US $75,000 in cash.

That's a whole lot of fake North Face jackets and Folex watches.

posted by Matt Dull @ 10:28 AM