I see an lot of people where I live using $100 bills in our new Chinatown. My guess is many people don't have credit cards and just find it easier to use cash. May be it's a Chinese cultural issue. Or perhaps there is a bit of income that is not being reported through use of cash. The positive and negative about credit cards is its easy to track your expenses. My guess is more of the older generation is into cash, instead of using credit cards. My Father-in-law I don't think even has a credit card for example. His kids on the other hand... :-)

If you get a fake $100 bill. Basically the last person holding it is stuck with it just like the game of hot potato. One good thing about running an online Chinese bookstore is no cash. And sometimes even the $100 bill you get from a bank may be fake. In our area many of the businesses have some type of fake bill checker I have heard.

I try to avoid $100 bills, so I don't have this issue. For some reason in our area Asian's using $100 bills have no problem. For a White guy like me it feels like I am getting the third degree when ever I try to use one.

Bank tries to pass the (fake) buck back to customer - LA Times

Labels: chinatowns