{"id":730953,"date":"2010-05-21T10:00:34","date_gmt":"2010-05-21T14:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"tag:consumerist.com,2010:\/\/1.10006902"},"modified":"2010-05-20T22:43:52","modified_gmt":"2010-05-21T02:43:52","slug":"what-should-i-do-with-my-stacks-of-chinese-currency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/730953","title":{"rendered":"What Should I Do With My Stacks Of Chinese Currency?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Greg has a question for the world travelers and expats who are part of the Consumerist hive mind. He writes that he has about $2,000 worth of Chinese yuan, in cash, from his first year as a teacher in China. He’s back visiting the US for a few weeks, and can’t figure out what to do with his giant pile o’yuan. <\/p>\n

I just finished my first year teaching in China and I’m back in America for a few weeks of R&R. I managed to save about $2000 in yuan (all cash) during my time there and thought I’d have an easy time converting it at my bank, Wells Fargo, when I returned. Not so much. When I went the other day, the bank was selling at a rate of $1:6.35CNY and buying at a rate of $1:7.69. My credit union doesn’t convert foreign currency and Travelex offered an even worse rate.<\/p>\n

I knew coming in that I’d have to pay some sort of premium (mostly for bill verification), but a 21% markup is excessive. The money I’m losing converting to dollars here could fund a nice inter-China trip with my ladyfriend. So, my question is: should I blow the money I saved on something epic like hiring the ingredients for a Bloomsday party bus (driver, wait staff, bus, monkey trainer, cases of Guinness), bite the bullet and drop it in my bank account at a loss or schlep it all back to China in search of a better exchange rate?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My vote: blow it all at Walmart.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greg has a question for the world travelers and expats who are part of the Consumerist hive mind. He writes that he has about $2,000 worth of Chinese yuan, in cash, from his first year as a teacher in China. He’s back visiting the US for a few weeks, and can’t figure out what to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2758,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-730953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-349z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2758"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}