I have to admit, it did take me a little while, probably a month, before I starting becoming familiar with Chinese money and that was only because another teacher sat me down one day and explained it. The official currency in the People's Republic of China is the renminbi 人民币 and literally means the people's currency. It's basic unit is the Yuan (¥) and this term is probably more wildly known internationally. But out here on the streets of Yongjia we generally use the word kuai, which you could say was a nickname.
Today, according to my trusty little iPhone app, $1NZ dollar is equal to 4.43 Chinese Yuan. To put it in perspective, that can buy me a big steamed pork dumpling and a cup or hot soy milk for a very yummy and filling breakfast, or five fried dumplings, or almost five small cartons of juice.
The highest valued banknote in China is the 100¥ and equates to just over $22.00NZD. It goes down from that to 50¥, 20¥, 10¥, 5¥ and then something weird happens. The 1¥ note also has a 1¥ coin and the 5 jiao note also has a matching 5 jiao coin (5 jiao is half of 1¥). Then there is the smaller 0.1 jiao coin. But the fact that some notes had a corresponding coin was confusing. There is also meant to be more bank notes of smaller denominations but these are from older circulations and therefore, harder to find nowadays. The banknote at the bottom of the picture is an example of a 5 jiao note from the 1980's and part of the 4th series of banknotes published in China. These older notes proudly display the diverse group of people living in China such as the different ethnic Chinese and those from places like Taiwan, Korea and Tibet. They also had different leaders and types of workers on them (e.g. a professor, field worker and a miner). A 5th series was subsequently introduced in 1999 and these groups were then replaced by the portrait of Mao Zedong.
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