money

awhile ago, i actually looked at the money here, and it's has pretty pictures. so i thought i'd share. =)

these are the backs of the coins. they all have a different flower.

these are the fronts of those coins:
the first one is 1 kwai (what people would say normally, but also called yuan or RMB). to be somewhat exact, 6.8 RMB = 1 US dollar, but we usually divide by 7 here to get an estimate. most of the time i've stopped converting though. now when i have to pay 4.5 RMB for a drink instead of 3 RMB for a drink, i think that's expensive! (that's 66 cents vs. 44 cents to give you an idea...) anyway, the golden colored coin is 5 mao, or half of 1 kwai. the smaller coin is 1 mao (or jiao, which i think you can see written on the coin), and that is 1/10 of 1 kwai (=not very much).

this is what the front of most money looks like, just with different numbers and colors. so this one is 5 kwai, slightly less than $1.00.

here's where it gets good though. this is the back of the 5 yuan note:
isn't it pretty?

this is the back of the 1 yuan note:
(yes, there is both a 1 yuan note and a 1 yuan coin.)

back of 10 yuan:

back of 20 yuan:

back of 50 yuan:

back of 100 yuan (the largest denomination--about $15.00):

there is one other bill that i know about, and that's the 1 mao note. i guess it's very rare now and hardly ever used, but a friend gave me one when we were making change for something and she told me i should just keep it and not spend it because i probably wouldn't see any every again.

this is the back:
and this is the front:

so there you go, that's your lesson in RMB. =)