Soaked and Fake

It's been raining for the better part of the last week. Yesterday and today have been the worst with constant downpours. We're getting more rain than we did when the tail-end of the typhoon past through a while back. Fortunately, my area and university campus have decent drainage and there hasn't been any flooding. But, it does ruin plans for the three-day weekend with flooded roads to potential destinations. It looks like we get to spend the days inside watching TV and reading.

I was struck a little bit ago with a common gripe--finding a fake 1 Yuan coin. Identifying a fake coin is quite difficult. Generally, the fakes are slightly thinner than the real thing. Also, most fakes don't have any printing on the edge. For some reason, the one I had today actually had that printing.

I asked my students Thursday why people would bother making these. They responded with: "You can make a lot of money." This argument doesn't make sense seeing as it takes too much effort to make a lot of money 1 Yuan at a time (not to mention the cost of actual production). Is it really worth counterfeiting such small sums?