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Comment by tomflack | Hacker News Reader

A side note: I'm currently in China, and as the article describes I have huge wads of 100RMB bills in my possession.

They smell terrible.

Is this usual for paper money? My home country went polymer over 20 years ago so I can't actually remember. Do used american bills smell like the sweaty palms of the thousand people who used them before you?

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Yes, US currency also smells very bad.

However, the US seems very aggressive about replacing worn bills. This may be related to the fact that so much of our currency goes in and out of automated machinery these days, and people don't hang on to cash very long.

Anecdotally, bills today seem much tidier than they did when I was a kid. Of the dozen bills in my pocket right now, none is older than 2006, and none are crumpled.

100 RMB bills get replaced pretty quickly also; its rare to see an old one. 50 RMB bills can be more worn, and its kind of a pain because the DPRK counterfeiters usually go after these notes. Recently, they've caught on to this and have been replacing 50 RMB bills more often.

1RMB notes are an abomination, and considering that there is a coin of that denomination I'm surprised they haven't been abolished. In my wallet now I have a couple of them dating from 1999. Dirty.

They only mint 1RMB coins in the south (e.g. Shanghai). Beijing and the north have mainly paper bills, we do get coins for the subway, however. Coins are annoying if clean, since we aren't used to them.

Laundry? US bills are made of cloth.

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