Fa Piao

I've been wondering about these pretty much as long as I've been in China. When you go to a restaurant or store, make that a nice restaurant or store, you get this little receipt for your purchase, a "fa piao" in Chinese, that has a scratch off part where you can win money. This always seemed like a strange practice to me. I got some partial explanations about it, people said it had something to do with taxes, but I never really understood. I was never that interested in the fa piao since you almost never won anything. Ken liked them a lot more and was really excited when he won 5 Rmb at a Pizza Hut once. But recently I stumbled upon this article which clear the whole thing up, http://todayilearned.co.uk/2010/11/17/taiwan-collects-sales-tax-from-businesses-through-the-national-lottery/ Yes, it talks about Taiwan but the same must be true here. Basically it says that in an effort to get businesses to actually report their sales taxes they make them give out little receipts which verify that there was a purchase made. The idea is that the businesses would have to give them out since the customers would want their chance to win.

True to form when I ate with someone more assertive like Qin Chen she would always make sure we got our fa piao, which the restaurant wouldn't always give at first. She once even got us a discount when the restaurant said they were out of fa piao. This may seem like a small thing to those of you back in America but I've been wondering about these things for years. Interestingly for whatever reason I've yet to see a single one in Xinjiang but then again they don't have Pizza Hut here. With this mystery solved now I'm just left wondering what is up with the "China Welfare Lottery," and yes that is an accurate translation.