I was buying something at a small stationary shop today. It was a small room run by a middle aged woman. My purchase cost 10RMB and I luckily had exactly enough 1RMB coins and notes to pay for it.
But as I counted out my change, the lady serving me held one note up.
“What the?”
I had noticed the strange note after I first received it. I’d examined it a s she was now, had shrugged, and stuffed it in my pocket.
Written across the note on one side is tightly compacted Chinese. There are no spaces, and every square centimeter is taken up in some kind of written rant.
I’m not sure what it all says, but it’s clearly the ramblings of some loony.
The first line is something about the diabolical party blaspheming against Buddha. Hurting the noble munks, spreading blasphemous ideas…. or something.
Anyway, the woman frowned at it.
“This is bullshit.” (or words to that effect!) “I um… don’t want it…” she said hesitatingly.
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know what IT said, I only looked carefully at what was written on it just now.
Her reaction wasn’t so much one of disgust as one of confusion. She didn’t know what to do. She should have just done what I did, shrugged and pocketed the money, and tried to hand it off to someone else.
“They’re cazy, all of them. They sometimes stick things under your door… If you went to a bank with that they’d probably punish you. If I gave that to someone they might think that I wrote it…”
She wasn’t angry or anything, in retrospect I think she might have been afraid that I had written it or something.
“Well I didn’t bloody well write it!” I said. Or words to that effect. (There isn’t an exact translation for “bloody well” in Chinese, but I think you get the gist of it.)
I showed her the change in my pocket.
“Look, other than the 9RMB that I’ve already given you, I only have 6 jiao, which is 4 jiao short of the 10RMB that my purchase costs. So unless you accept my 1 RMB not that features the ramblings of a madman, you’re going to have to give me the thing for 9.60.”
Then she did the strangest thing.
She nodded.
I couldn’t believe it.
I’ve never known anyone to turn down money. 4 jiao isn’t a lot, but it’s SOMETHING. But she didn’t want anything to do with the 1 RMB note with the funny writing.
And it obviously wasn’t something that offended her as a person living in the PRC, it was just something that she wasn’t comfortable with.
But the strangest thing was her reaction when I offered to buy the item for a lower price, without using the offending note. I only said it as a joke, but she agreed immediately!
The Chinese are, at their root, practical, and I’v never heard of anyone willingly accept a loss in that way. And this wasn’t just a metaphorical loss of “face” or anything, this was a hard, financial loss, albeit a small one.
