Why No One Wanted $100

How long would an unclaimed $100 bill stay unclaimed in your local neighborhood, campus, or workplace? My name is Hubert Qu, a dancer with Shen Yun, and this is one little story.

A few years ago, I was walking through the highest-traffic public area of my workplace at Shen Yun, and for the tenth time that week wondered whose one-hundred-dollar bill was lying there on the table for nearly a month now.

For weeks, my colleagues and I, along with hundreds of others, had been bustling past that sorry, orphaned Benjamin Franklin, waiting for a kind soul to take him in, as inflation slowly eroded his self-worth.

Stray wallets, watches, phones, and cash are common sights at Shen Yun HQ, faithfully waiting for their owners to pick them up, but this denomination was a bit ridiculous. Was this a social experiment? Was this poorly communicated charity?

Regardless, this Ben Frank was getting old as he loitered around, not earning interest from or for anyone. After about a month, someone had enough and sent it to management to deal with.

I think a great deal of this phenomenon owes to the company culture. Or maybe it’s something in the water. A unique aspect of Shen Yun is that although its constituents hail from different backgrounds and cultures, we are harmonized by a shared belief in the same values: Truth, Compassion, Forbearance—the core principles of our faith. People just don’t take what doesn’t belong to them.

Before the start of every Shen Yun tour season, company managers always go through the same spiel: “Folks, please. You can’t just leave your valuables lying around the theaters of the world like you do at our HQ. Things don’t actually stay where you leave them like they do here.”

It sounds absurd, but it’s a good reminder. Back in my high school days in Los Angeles, my money definitely ran away from home every now and then. Here at Shen Yun, my cash has become significantly more domesticated, but I couldn't count on it once it ventured outside the Shen Yun community.

Though I sometimes take it for granted, here I trust the integrity of my peers, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.