The Newmans

Well, after about a week and a half without our passports, they have returned, complete with new Visas. We're free again!

These Chinese departments can be strange. Fortunately, our HR seems to know the ropes and, amazingly, we managed to get our passports returned the very day the old visas expired. The validity of our new visas coincides with no multiple of years or months with the submittal or return dates of our passports or any such date in between, nor does it coincide with any dates that correlate to the old visas. Let's just say that they're valid for less than a year which, for those living here semi-permanently, means renewing visas more often than the claimed, expected and typical 1 year duration.

If we were school teachers working here for a year that might have resulted in us having to renew visas before completing the school year. 

The typhoons and tropical storms of the season have been creating some very bad weather and much tragedy for some people. Notably there seem to be lots of coal miners trapped underground in underground mines. Of course, their bosses knew of the weather warnings. The illegality of coal mines doesn't seem to count for much, with corrupt owners and government officials turning the ignominious blind eye after a bit of greasing of palms and not letting expendable human life stand in the way of making a profit. There are always more people to hire. When this kind of thing happens it's the poor in the provinces who really lose out. So far this year possibly 2000 miners have lost their lives, but that's probably a conservative estimate.

The Chinese currency is officially called the Renminbi, or RMB. Translated, it means "The People's money". There's an excellent site that shows all the different notes and coins here. There's some formal and informal names given to the different values, so here's a list.

Units of currency

• Yuan - The formal name for the single currency unit. It's available in coins that are a bit smaller than our 20c piece and manky notes. It's the equivalent to our word dollars. Today, 1 Aussie dollar buys you 6.24 Yuan.
• Kuai - Pronounced kwai, it's the informal name for the Yuan. It's the equivalent of our word 'bucks'. Ironically, the same word spoken with the same tone means 'fast'.
• Jiao - Worth 0.1 Yuan, you'll almost certainly be using jiao when going shopping
• Mao - The informal name for Jiao
• Fen - Worth 0.01 Yuan, or 0.16 Australian cents. These little buggers can be quite annoying because they're not useful for much except for putting under the leg of a table that rocks back and forth in a restaurant.

Notes and coins

• Yuan is available in notes of 100, 50, 20, 10, 5, 2 and 1 Yuan
• Yuan is available in a coin of 1 Yuan
• Jiao is available in notes of 5 jiao, 2 jiao and 1 jiao
• Jiao is available in coins of 5 jiao and 1 jiao
• Fen is available in coins of 5 fen, 2 fen and 1 fen

Counterfeiting of the money, as you can imagine, is a huge problem in China. The largest note is the 100 Yuan (AU$16.50) and because of this there's copies everywhere. The next largest note is the 50 Yuan and this one is heavily copied too because it's usually given in change for something paid for with a 100 Yuan note. Even copied 1 Yuan coins can be found and I've had the ticket ladies on the buses reject them. Most ATM's in well-to-do areas deliver brand new 100 Yuan notes and these make some shop-keepers very suspicious. 

Having the same values available in both notes and coins presents a small problem. Some provinces seem to prefer the notes, others the coins. Even here in our Guangdong province the people of Shenzhen prefer coins whereas 1 1/2 hours away in Huizhou they prefer notes. 

I prefer the coins every time. Many people don't seem to try and preserve the notes at all. They simply grab at them and scrunch them. Sometimes a store owner will remove a ball of notes from their pocket and then just keep un-scrunching until they find the one they want, then scrunch them all back up again. The crusty, disgusting, disease-ridden, manky, scrunched, torn, polluted, rotten and ghastly state that some of the small value notes can get themselves into is truly disgusting.

The sooner China gets with the 20th century and moves over to plastic money, the better. 

A disease in pigs is currently spreading across China. The government is desperately trying to keep a lid on things however news about it is leaking out.

This reduction in pork supply is pushing the price upwards. The average price of pork in June was 74.6% higher than at the same time 12 months ago. 

Called Blue Ear Disease (also known as Porcine Respiratory and Reproductive Syndrome), it has killed thousands of pigs across China. So far this month there have been outbreaks recorded in 11 provinces. This year there have been outbreaks found in 22 provinces, not bad for a country with only 23 provinces, 5 autonomous regions and 4 self-governed municipalities.

News reports are bringing patchy and sometimes contradictory information about what's going on. Some reports claim a few thousand pigs have died, others claim that the disease has killed over 1 million animals in 2007 alone. The most common numbers are that 40,000 - 50,000 animals have died due to the disease. Some reports claim that the disease does not affect people whilst other reports claim that 35 people have died already and China is on the verge of a human pandemic. Officially, the disease is 'under control'.

China is a strange country. Just recently the US complained to China about some imported foods being contaminated. What was the response by the Chinese government? To ban the import of pork and chicken's feet from a few selected companies from the US back into China! It may seem childish but it shows in a small way just how much political weight China is gaining on the world stage.

This picture was taken in the Meridean View Centre atop the Diwang building, talking about Shenzhen approximately 15 years ago. I think it speaks for itself.

China is a place where the gap between the rich and the poor is not just a gap, it’s a chasm. Officially, there are a lot more Chinese US$ millionaires (there are about 300,000) than there are Chinese people below the poverty line. Unofficially, there are still people suffering malnutrition and starvation in many places across China.

The numbers game - the number of Chinese who are officially below the poverty line is purely a function of where the poverty line actually is! China does not follow the International poverty line of US$1 per day. It has it’s own line set at RMB 680 per year (US$85), or in other words less than 1/4 of the International poverty line.

My heart goes out to the poor that we see. It’s impossible to compare their hopelessness and desperation with our own relative decadence. We usually give them something. Some of the beggars are ‘employed’ to beg and they target wealthy westerners. Sometimes it’s obvious which ones are ‘working’ and which ones are genuinely in need. When in doubt, we give. To be in a position where you’re forced to work for someone else as a beggar is a pretty grim situation anyway. A few crumbs from our table will hopefully make a difference, however big or small, to a precious few of them.