Relative value.
We have 3 piggy banks. One for Hong Kong dollars, one for Patacas (MOP), and one for Renminbi (Yuan). In Hong Kong, they take Hong Kong dollars. In Macau, they take Hong Kong dollars and Patacas. In Actually China (ZhuHai), they take Yuan and sometimes Hong Kong Dollars. So Hong Kong Dollars are generally safe. But 100 HKD is 94 Yuan (so in Actually China you just pay the marked price in HKD rather than haggle for a lower price in yuan), and 103 MOP. In Macau, if you pay in HKD, you generally pay as if they’re MOP, and get change in MOP[0]. So you lose $3 on $100. Which is about $0.50 Australian. Which hardly seems worrying about. Except that, over 2 years, if I pay HKD for everything in Macau, assuming I spend my entire salary, I lose about $3,500 Australian, because you can be damn sure the bank will reduce my balance by $103 every time I take out $100 HKD. It adds up.
Anyway. Today we went to Actually China, to show Rabbit the acres of bling. I managed to blow $750 yuan on a little stereo, a DVD player, 9 DVDs, and the boxed set of Rome. Season 1 and 2. That’s $115 AUD, with today’s shitty exchange rate. I am, as my wife points out, a spendthrift and a wastrel.
But I can’t help thinking. At these prices, someone has to be getting screwed. And that’s the hardest thing to get used to over here, about the “Chinese culture”. This country takes for granted a level of poverty that we hardly see at home. And my bleeding heart left wing friends will say “Oh, we have poor people here!”, and they’re right – and the state, for example, of our indigenous population is tragic – but in Australia, they are the exception. In Hong Kong, in Macau, in Actually China, people are not only poor, but poverty – what you or I would call poverty, if you have a computer to read this – is the norm. There’s no great debate about escalating house prices or election pork-barreling. There’s a resource boom here, too, though – the hike in the price of copper recently makes it worthwhile for someone to sit and strip every piece of cable and pipe from old buildings, and then every strand of wire from every metre of that cable.
So I don’t haggle too much, in Actually China. I could probably get a 65 Yuan ($10 AUD) tshirt down to 50 Yuan ($7.50 AUD). But that 15 Yuan is a meal for someone else, and pocket change for me. I’m not sure how long it will take to get used to that.
jai.
[0] For large purchases, there are often 2 prices – HKD and MOP – taking the exchange rate into account. But usually, in supermarkets and street vendors, you’ll pay $20 HKD for a $15 MOP purchase, and get 5 MOP change.
December 1st, 2007 at 5:25 am
That must be very confronting. I must admit I’ve always been horrified about tourists bargaining when the amount they save means nothing to them but so much to the vendor. So what if they charge higher prices for tourists? Tourists have so much more money!
I’ve never been to China and have only spent a few days in Hong Kong, many years ago. The thing I remember was the old people cleaning the streets (I’m assuming because there was no aged pension – is that right?). That kind of shook me. In Australia, old age for most people is a time for calling talkback radio, chasing kids off the lawn and playing lawn bowls and it had not occurred to me what a luxury that is.
Hope you’re going okay and that Rabbit arrived safely. I’m missing you both already!
December 4th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
I was pretty disturbed by the levels of obvious poverty in China. Bear got 60Y stolen out of his pocket, but we chose not to care – although others at his office thought we should.
I didn’t really have a problem giving money to beggars – but we also got told repeatedly not to do that.
Bear got really quite offended when he found out what his companies Chinese programmers were being paid compared to what he was being paid.
Its really quite ugly, and the attitude I got from the Chinese people I was speaking to was that people were only poor because they choose to be….
And then Jason was boasting about the 2 little chinese girls he paid to clean their apartment and how cheap they were. These girls were on their hands and knees at the time scrubbing his floor. I really wanted to tell him – if they are that cheap at least buy a fucking mop and some decent cleaning products for them to make their job easier.
note – commented on lj and then wondered if you get comments on an RSS feed?