'Our missions are secret'

By early November, the leaves of the plants and trees on the vast grassland of the Xilin Golleague, a prefecture-level division of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, had turned to golden brown, but Lyu Mingbao had no time for the beautiful scenery. Instead, his eyes were firmly focused on two bulletproof trucks that were transporting bank notes on the 350-km journey to a city on China's border with Mongolia.

Lyu has been in charge of the escort department of the People's Bank of China's sub-central branch in Xilinhot for eight years. "We escort bank notes from the printing plants to the vault at our branch, and then transport them to 13 different places within the league," the 56-year-old said. Since 2010, the team, which is always armed, has completed more than 200 missions and travelled 150,000 km.

Before commercial banks withdraw the bills from PBOC branches, they cannot be referred to as "cash", instead they are called "issuance funds", he said.