Counterfeit $2.64 bills

When I tried to pay for my lunch on Saturday, the restaurant I frequent wouldn't take the 20RMB ($2.64) note I handed them. Actually, I didn't even finish handing the bill over before they rejected it; it was a pretty obvious counterfeit. I had gotten the bill the night before while out at a fancy lounge. The lounge has two girls sitting at a desk with a UV lamp and a bright visible spectrum lamp checking incoming bills, so it's not really possible that the money I was given in change came from the till by accident. Somewhere between the till and my hands the fake 20 had to have been switched in and the real one pocketed, so that means it was probably the waitress. It was dark and I was drinking, and I don't usually check bills under 50RMB anyway, even though they apparently even make fake 5RMB notes. Fortunately I had enough coins and small bills at the restaurant to pay for lunch, otherwise I would have had to go to a bank and come back. They know me there, so it probably would have been fine, but it was irritating.

I've decided to keep the counterfeit note rather than to try to just spend it. The typical attitude towards a fake bill here is one of annoyance. It's not usually a real loss, you just have to keep trying to pass it until someone takes it, then it's their problem.

I had hoped to write something here about statistics on counterfeiting in China versus the rest of the world, but no one seems to have the numbers. There are reports in newspapers of huge sting operations seizing millions of dollars worth of fake Chinese currency, but that's all released by the Chinese government in official Chinese government-owned newspapers, and there doesn't seem to be anything recently. The general consensus on the street is that with the rise of cheap printing technology, counterfeiting is worse here than ever.