China and Money
 

We will be traveling to China next month and I am not sure about which form of money to take. I understand they take American dollars, but would it be better to take some travelers checks and a credit card? Or a combination of all?

When I was in China in 204, I used US dollars, local currency and credit cards at good restaurants.
I didn't bother with travels checks.

There's no advantage that I can see in taking US$, and frankly it strikes me as a bit patronising to attempt to pay in one's own currency rather than the host country's, even though it may be acceptable in some situations.

We paid by credit card where we could (airlines, hotels, some restaurants) and used yuan for everything else. Take a debit card and use ATMs, but check with your bank first to make sure there'll be no hitches. We were restricted to Bank of China ATMs, but that was no hardship.

For most purposes travellers' cheques went out with carburettors.

We had American $$ with us and converted them at the airport and also converted easily at our hotel. My husband also used his ATM card with no problem.

NOTE: if you want to convert BACK to American $ before leaving, make sure you keep your exchange receipts. I was able to convert back my money, but didn't have enough receipts to do what was left of my husband's. And, of course, he hadn't saved his receipts!

I agree with Neil - altho occasionally acceptable, I think it's best to use the host country's currency.

I disagree with a few of these posts. TCs and US$ can come in handy in China. Perhaps some of the other travellers didn't spend long periods of time outside of the large cities and were able to get by with their credit cards and ATM cards. If you are likely to be off the beaten track at any time it might be handy to have some US$ which you can change at most banks.

Anyone who has ever been robbed might testify to the value of TCs

http://www.travelsinasia.com/China/China.htm

WeiLong, if you're off the beaten track, why not carry Chinese currency?

I agree that if you're going to be robbed it's better to lose TCs than cash, but if you're careful about where you carry your money you won't be robbed in the first place.

If you are going to stay in a big city, such as ShangHai, it is very modenized. Credit card are widely accepted. ATMs are easy to find. If you are staying somewhere close to HongKong, such as GuangZhou and ShenZhen, HongKong dollars are welcome everywhere. I would use ATM to withdraw enough HK dollars in HK before I head to China and use HK dollars in GuangDong area. HK dollars also give you more leverage to bargain. If you are going to smaller places, I would have US dollars with me.

Neil_Oz, When we used US dollars it was at the request of chinese vendors, not from the perspective of our insisting to use our own currency.
We expected all transactions to be done in local currency, but it didn't matter to us one way or the other.

We are going to Shanghai, Beijing and Suzhou. I think I will stick with half US dollars so I have some to exchange and some to use and use my credit card. Thank you all for your input!

On a recent trip to China, we used US$ (mostly for tips) and Chinese currency. We used our credit card less on this trip than any time we've traveled. We got Chinese currency from ATM's whenever they were available and had no problems.

dperry - fair enough, and interesting. In 3 weeks in China, travelling independently, not once did anyone ask us to pay in US$. Maybe they identified us as non-Americans? Crafty buggers!

PIPERPAT, no need to tip in US$ or any other currency in China. The Chinese never tip.

We were never asked to use American money, but tipping was necessary for guides and bus drivers (we were on a tour) and it was simpler in US$.

We recently did a tour in China and we were told by our TC to tip the guide and driver in US$ which surprised me because we are Canadian. We did tip our Beijing guide/driver in US but then noticed everyone else used yuans. So we did for the other 3 cities on the tour.

We had US $ for changing money into RBC because it seemed more acceptable than CDN dollars but we did use US one dollar bills in Bejing only to buy hats, etc from street hawkers.

We got off lightly - we only took one day tour, and as half the punters were Chinese and none of the rest were North Americans the guide could have had no expectation of being tipped. People who know China much better than I do tell me that tour guiding is a lucrative occupation, though, as guides do well from kickbacks paid by stores and restaurants.

I found that the street vendors always would try to sell us things quoting the price in USD. They seem to love the dollars. Some of the things we bought were so inexpensive, like $1 but we were probably paying double had we paid in their currency. Just seemed a lot easier to carry lots of small USD bills with us and then use cc for large purchases.

petlover, I suspect that it's the prices you were paying they loved rather than the currency you paid in. Although it's possible that brandishing US dollar bills might mark you out as even more of a soft touch in a bargaining situation.

Actually, I think that paying Y6 for something is likely to give you a better feel for the real value of things than paying $1, and probably makes for better cost control.

So, why not use local currency? I can't see why US$ would have any special attraction for vendors, as they'd have to exchange it for yuan at some stage at the fixed rate.

Neil Oz - You are correct about tour guides taking a cut. HongQiao Pearl City in Shanghai is a typical destination for tour buses. One of the vendors there told me that the tour operators take a 60% cut of the sales price! That's why people in tour groups pay the Cashier booth instead of the individual stall owner and then go back to pick up their purchased item. (I'd suggest people claim you're not with the group so you can get a better price and pay the booth owner directly.) For individual tours, if after your helpful guide negotiates your purchase they say they need to go back because they accidentally forgot their keys or whatever, then you know they're going back for their cut. I've heard and seen it happen. They negotiate their cut before the cost of the item.

Oh, and the tip thing is made up to see if they can get extra money from foreigners. I'd bet there's collusion and the person recommending you to tip will get a share. I'm pretty cynical from living in Shanghai.

Is it possible/advisable to get some Chinese currency (say $100-worth or so) in the States before departure? Suggestions as to how to go about this?

We went to a currency "store" in the local mall and bought US, Chinese Yuans and Hong Kong dollars. Just a bit of each to carry us over to when we could exchange.

It turned out that we got too much because every hotel did exchanges.

Since it's easy to exchange money at the airport once you get there, there is no advantage to getting Chinese currency in advance. Indeed, you'll pay lots more for Chinese (or HK or any other) currency in your own country than you will when you are in China.