Fake Out

Today, Time came home from his latest adventure (this time hanging out with a Chinese engineering student – fascinating, right), waving around a 20元 bill. Apparently, the grocery store had given him a fake 20 as part of his change, so he couldn’t buy anything all day because no one would accept it. His fake bill was my first experience with counterfeit money, and it was pretty pathetic. It looked and felt like a double-sided, color photocopy of a 20元 bill – the two sides weren’t even perfectly matched up. I am pretty surprised that the grocery store accepted it in the first place, but maybe the cashier had realized that she had accidently accepted a fake bill and chose Tim , a foreigner, as the perfect recipient for it since he probably wouldn’t notice right away. On the plus side, he did get a great little souvenir from China for under $3. Granted, by the time Angie and I had returned from dinner, all that was left of his bill was a charred corner where he had clearly been holding the bill to the flame. He let his inner pyromaniac take over…