http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/investing/china-currency-renminbi-bank-account/19801728/
The Bank of China's New York Branch announced this week that Americans will now be able to open FDIC-guaranteed accounts in the bank in a way that was never before permitted -- by converting their deposits into the Chinese currency, known officially as the renminbi and colloquially as the yuan.
According to the bank's website, account owners can exchange as much as $4,000 worth of renminbi a day, up to a maximum of $20,000 a year. Of course, there isn't much you can do with renminbi in the U.S. beyond putting them under your mattress (and you can't even do that, as at the moment, the bank won't let you take U.S. withdrawals in renminbi). Nor do the accounts pay interest.
