Xiao piao vs fa piao
(Expenses in the flat: Suzhou, China)
Each month, I sit down and do the expenses for Ying and myself and this is pretty much what it looks like. Since he generally works long hours, it makes sense that I do it (plus of course, I am much better at it than he is). This week, there are long meetings at work for him so often I do not see him until 8 or 9pm in the evening when we eat together.
Accounting is not particularly riveting, especially since I find reading Chinese ones a little challenging. The receipts in China are quite interesting as there are two kinds; the small paper ones we are used to in the UK are called ‘xiao piao’, meaning ‘little ticket’ and I don’t really keep these. The other kind have two oval red stamps (as you can see here) and are called ‘fa piao’ which presumably translates as ‘official ticket’ or something of that ilk. By the way, I am open for my observations to be corrected – but based on my own understanding – this is how it works: these ones have the government stamp printed on the top and then the business add their own stamp as the receipt is printed. The stamps indicate that the company is registered with the government and therefore pays tax. Asking for a fa piao basically means that the business has to declare your custom.
There are at least two kinds of fa piao as well; the receipt kind and the voucher kind, which are torn out of a little book like a cheque. The vouchers look like a kind of play money, or a book token printed with a value of currency. For instance, if I spent thirty seven yuan, the fa piao vouchers might be made up in a twenty yuan voucher ‘note’, a ten, a five and 2 ones. It was all very confusing at first, but asking “qing gei fa piao’ (please give me a fa piao) with every purchase isn’t stretching my Chinese too much.
All this preamble is leading up to what I reckon is the interesting bit. To encourage people to ask for fa piao, every one is printed with a silver scratch card panel that the recipient is supposed to scrape away. It’s a scratch lottery. Occasionally it’s possible to win money by doing this – you can take the fa piao back to the shop and exchange it for cash. It is a neat government incentive for consumers to ask for receipts. It’s quite common for people to be standing outside restaurants scrabbling away with a small coin, or slouched over a set of vouchers at a bar. This is one of the aspects of China I have gotten used to, and it only occurred to me today that it’s so different from any other place I’ve been.
请给发票 (qing gei fa piao) or 请开发票 (qing kai fa piao)
literally means “please give tax invoice” or “please open/issue tax invoice”
From what I have learnt, the maximum prize is 500 yuan cash, which is about 45 pounds. Not too shabby, eh? Keep scratching, Rosie!
By the way, nice nails!
500? Wow! I’ll be much more vigilant with scratching the panels from now on… I can buy a lot of colouring pencils with that!
actually, or apparently since I have never had the pleasure, the maximum find on said Fa Piao can be anything up to 10,000RMB (that’s about 1000 squid!!! a whole grand give or take with fluctuating exchange rates, but it’s better than a pony for sure) now that’s why I am an obsessive scratcher and a believer in one’s own Fa Piao, or better, multiples where possible, as it ups the possibility greatly of being a very happy scratcher indeed.
hope to meet you one of these days YT!!
or is it a monkey, rather than a pony? having looked at some websites (rather foolish) I am now deeply confused!