Chinese Man Buys Car with Spare Change

And next up...here is one way that a Chinese man used his savings. It was years in the making, but Mr. Zhao bought a brand new car with nothing but spare change. Once he had saved the money, his hardships were not over. Then he had to find a dealership that would accept his small bills.

Turning his back on loans and credit cards, one man in northern China opted to buy a $14,000 van with small change.

The man is only being identified as Mr. Zhao, a businessman from Jining City in northern China's Shandong Province. He bought the van to expand his business.

However, unlike most car buyers, he opted to buy his car with bags filled with over one hundred thousand paper notes, the largest denomination is one yuan, worth around $0.15 U.S. dollars.

Finding a car dealership willing to accept his unusual payment method was not an easy task.

[Mr. Zhao, Car Buyer]:
"I held onto the money waiting to see if they would accept it so that I could buy the car. The manager of this dealership decided to accept my cash, so that was really helpful to me."

As an owner of a plastics printing company, most of Mr. Zhao's customers pay him with their spare change.

These transactions have left him with piles of small bills.

Some of the notes were stained and torn, others were stuck together, but after many hours of hard work the car dealership cashiers confirmed that he had provided exact change.

[Chen Ying, Dealership Cashier]:
"Our finance department originally had three or four people counting the money, but that is certainly not enough. So we added some colleagues from the sales department, they came in the morning and worked all day, and then we added another shift. We finally finished counting all of the money."

Mr. Zhao finally drove away with his new car and $15,000 lighter.