New | Chinese man buys iPhone 5S with huge stacks of five mao bills
A man in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province amazed shop clerks when he tried to pay for several iPhones with thousands of five mao (0.5 yuan) notes.
The man then left the store, returning with three large sacks from which he "poured bundles and bundles of money, all five mao notes," Xu said.
The man told Xu that each bundle contained 500 yuan worth of bills and counted out 40 to cover the cost of the phones.
"I've had this shop for more than 20 years and I've never encountered such a thing," Xu said. After examining the notes carefully to ensure they weren't fakes, he agreed to the transaction.
Staff were reportedly laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation, and began snapping photos of the piles of cash. Unfortunately for Xu however, the story didn't have a happy ending.
After taking the money to a local bank – which took nearly two hours to count it – the bundles turned out to only contain 10,000 yuan worth of bills, meaning Xu had been cheated of around 50 per cent of the cost of the phones.
