Fat man approuching coin-only machine

Just a short vignette: after we got off the bullet train in Xian, we made our way to the subway. For some reason, the Chinese will often dedicate two or three of the five ticket machines as coin-only machines, despite the fact that the coins are rarely used in China and that each of the machines has a paper bill-feeder. At most stations, the regular machines have long lines while the coin-only machines lie unused.

Getting off the bullet train, I was the fifth person in line for the regular ticket machine. A fat man with a square haircut brushed past me, moving to the unused, coin-only machine. I watched him as he went through and selected the station name and the number of tickets he wanted.

Then, he pulled out a five RMB bill and tried to shove his bill into the bill feeder. The machine spit his bill back out at him. He fed it back into the machine after wiping it out flat. This process continued for almost a minute; each time the bill came back to him, he would either turn it a different way or try to smooth it out more.

I felt bad for the man, so I leaned from my spot in line and, in Chinese, told him, “You can’t use paper money here,” pointing to the sign on the machine that read in Chinese, “Coins only.”

He looked up at the sign, then at me, then back at the sign. “Oh,” he grunted, saying little more.

China has created so much wealth in such a short time. This man was a great example. He probably was born dirt-poor and now he is the richest businessman in his village and has money to throw around on big meals and a 520 RMB (approximately $85 USD) trip to Xian. But he was still just a bumpkin, totally unaware of how things work in the big city.

Fat Man joining us on the subway