Shrapnel

For the benefit of those not from the UK, "shrapnel" is what we affectionately call our lowest denomination coinage, since our 1p and 2p pieces are brown (another term is "coppers"), small, and have (I'm almost positive) been used in terrorists' bombs over the years as a cheap and ironic way of damaging / killing while implying the reason for the trouble in the first place lies with England (the Queen is pictured on our coins) ... I digress for the sake of clarifying this entry's title.

In Australia, they don't have 1c and 2c pieces. Everything is in denominations of 5c. This is because the government down under realised the very smallest coins were basically pointless and not worth carrying around. This is sensible, Britain should follow suit. We should also have plastic money, a better health service, and Christmas in the summer ;) But China takes it to a whole new level.

* At the top there is the Yuan (元) (also called the Ren Min Bi 人民币, or People's Currency as it literally translates).
* Next comes the Jiao (nicknamed the Mao) - there are 10 Jiao to a Yuan, effectively every Jiao is a 10p piece, and every Yuan is a pound in this system.
* Finally there are the Fen, 10 fen to a jiao, effectively these are the "pennies" of the Chinese system.

However, because economies work differently, the fen is basically useless. Even today with a crashing pound and the world market in a crisis, one fen is worth just £0.001, or 1/10th of a British penny. When I came to China it was worth even less than that, but that's a story of happier economic times. Anyway, 1/10th of a penny will not get you anything, even in China, even in Urumqi (one of the cheapest places going I believe). The only time one encounters this phenomenon is in supermarkets, and I HATE it. If my bill was 99 Yuan, and I gave 100, I would get 1 Yuan change. If it was 99.50, I would get 5 Jiao change (the Jiao are actually worth something you see, and theyre relatively easy to keep track of, since theyre almost 100% in note form), but if the bill is 99.01, I will get a few Jiao and an irritating Fen or two for good measure. The Fen come in denominations of 5 and 1 (remember there are 10 fen to the JIAO, damn it!) and they are small coins made of cheap metal, the kind that feels like plastic.

In an otherwise 99.9% note-based system, this is just ridiculous. The government would do well to just get rid of this part of currency since it serves almost no purpose, and the coins must be worth more than their stated value, which might as well read "fuck all".