Numbers in Chinese – My Guide

In this guide, I will start by giving beginners a useful guide to Chinese numbers, then I’ll provide some references for translators.

Chinese numbers are very easy for the most part, if you learn from 1 to 10, you can then calculate numbers right up to 99, then if you add the word 100 you can get up to 999, and so on. However for translators, there are some nasty surprises in formal documents like bank statements or contracts which are not covered in any academic textbooks.

In Chinese texts, there’s nothing to stop writers using our familiar English numbers (I’m aware they are actually Arabic, but I think the term “English numbers” is clearer). If that happens, be warned that they won’t be included in Asian word counts done with most software. See my article on Word Counts for more information about that.

 

Part 1 – Easy Chinese Numbers

Chinese numbers from zero to ten

Chinese numbers from 1-10 couldn’t be much easier. There is one character per number, except for the number for “0” which is commonly written in two ways: The character for zero is often just written with a big circle character 〇 as well as with the formal character 零. As an aside I used to believe that the 〇 character was derived from the English 0 but actually it’s the other way round. The English 0 is derived from an Indian version of 〇.

 

Some exceptions

When the number two (二) means “two of something”, the character changes to “两” (liang3 – “two of”). In some dialects “两个” (“two of”) can be merged into “俩” (lia3) which then does not require “个”.

List of Chinese numbers from zero to ten

English number	Simplified Chinese character	Traditional Chinese character	Hanyu pinyin pronunciation	English pronunciation guide
00	〇 / 零	〇 / 零	ling2	"Ling" (like link with a g instead of k)
1	一	一	yi1	"Eeee" (rhymes with me)
2	二	二	er4	"Eeer" (like "her" without the h)
3	三	三	san1	"Saaaan" (like "sand" without the d)
4	四	四	si4	"Ser" (rhymes with her, but with a very soft "r" sound)
5	五	五	wu3	"Wooo" (woo-hoo!)
6	六	六	liu4	"Li-ooo"
7	七	七	Qi1	"Che" (like "cheese" without the "se")
8	八	八	Ba1	"Ba" (like a black sheep!)
9	九	九	Jiu3	"Geee-ooo" (Like "gee-wizz, ooo-ah Cantona)
10	十	十	Shi2	"Shi" (rhymes with her but with a soft "r")

Chinese numbers from eleven to nineteen

Once you get to ten, just put ten in front of any other number to make numbers from 11 to 19. For example “15” is just written as “Ten Five”, 18 is written as “Ten Eight”.

English number	Simplified Chinese number	Traditional Chinese number	Hanyu pinyin	Comments
11	十一	十一	Shi2yi1	Note that these numbers are rolled into one without a space; not Shi Yi, but Shiyi1
12	十二	十二	Shi2er4
13	十三	十三	Shi2san1
14	十四	十四	Shi2si4
15	十五	十五	Shi2wu3
16	十六	十六	Shi2liu4
17	十七	十七	Shi2qi1
18	十八	十八	Shi2ba1
19	十九	十九	Shi2jiu3

Chinese numbers from twenty to ninety-nine

Twenty is also very easy, just say “Two Ten”, twenty one is then “Two Ten One” and so on. That gets us all the way up to 99.

English number	Simplified Chinese number	Traditional Chinese number	Hanyu pinyin	Comments
20	二十	二十	Er4shi2	Again, note how the pinyin for these characters is written without spaces
21	二十一	二十一	Er4shi2yi1
22	二十二	二十二	Er4shi2er4
23	二十三	二十三	Er4shi2san1
24	二十四	二十四	Er4shi2si4
25	二十五	二十五	Er4shi2wu3
26	二十六	二十六	Er4shi2liu4
27	二十七	二十七	Er4shi2qi1
28	二十八	二十八	Er4shi2ba1
29	二十九	二十九	Er4shi2jiu3
30	三十	三十	San1shi2
31	三十一	三十一	San1shi2yi1
32	三十二	三十二	San1shi2er4
33	三十三	三十三	San1shi2san1
34	三十四	三十四	San1shi2si4
35	三十五	三十五	San1shi2wu3
36	三十六	三十六	San1shi2liu4
37	三十七	三十七	San1shi2qi1
38	三十八	三十八	San1shi2ba1
39	三十九	三十九	San1shi2jiu3
40	四十	四十	Si4shi2
41	四十一	四十一	Si4shi2yi1
42	四十二	四十二	Si4shi2er4
43	四十三	四十三	Si4shi2san1
44	四十四	四十四	Si4shi2si4
45	四十五	四十五	Si4shi2wu3
46	四十六	四十六	Si4shi2liu4
47	四十七	四十七	Si4shi2qi1
48	四十八	四十八	Si4shi2ba1
49	四十九	四十九	Si4shi2jiu3
50	五十	五十	Wu3shi2
51	五十一	五十一	Wu3shi2yi1
52	五十二	五十二	Wu3shi2er4
53	五十三	五十三	Wu3shi2san1
54	五十四	五十四	Wu3shi2si4
55	五十五	五十五	Wu3shi2wu3
56	五十六	五十六	Wu3shi2liu4
57	五十七	五十七	Wu3shi2qi1
58	五十八	五十八	Wu3shi2ba1
59	五十九	五十九	Wu3shi2jiu3
60	六十	六十	Liu4shi2
61	六十一	六十一	Liu4shi2yi1
62	六十二	六十二	Liu4shi2er4
63	六十三	六十三	Liu4shi2san1
64	六十四	六十四	Liu4shi2si4
65	六十五	六十五	Liu4shi2wu3
66	六十六	六十六	Liu4shi2liu4
67	六十七	六十七	Liu4shi2qi1
68	六十八	六十八	Liu4shi2ba1
69	六十九	六十九	Liu4shi2jiu3
70	七十	七十	Qi1shi2
71	七十一	七十一	Qi1shi2yi1
72	七十二	七十二	Qi1shi2er4
73	七十三	七十三	Qi1shi2san1
74	七十四	七十四	Qi1shi2si4
75	七十五	七十五	Qi1shi2wu3
76	七十六	七十六	Qi1shi2liu4
77	七十七	七十七	Qi1shi2qi1
78	七十八	七十八	Qi1shi2ba1
79	七十九	七十九	Qi1shi2jiu3
80	八十	八十	Ba1shi2
81	八十一	八十一	Ba1shi2yi1
82	八十二	八十二	Ba1shi2er4
83	八十三	八十三	Ba1shi2san1
84	八十四	八十四	Ba1shi2si4
85	八十五	八十五	Ba1shi2wu3
86	八十六	八十六	Ba1shi2liu4
87	八十七	八十七	Ba1shi2qi1
88	八十八	八十八	Ba1shi2ba1
89	八十九	八十九	Ba1shi2jiu3
90	九十	九十	Jiu3shi2
91	九十一	九十一	Jiu3shi2yi1
92	九十二	九十二	Jiu3shi2er4
93	九十三	九十三	Jiu3shi2san1
94	九十四	九十四	Jiu3shi2si4
95	九十五	九十五	Jiu3shi2wu3
96	九十六	九十六	Jiu3shi2liu4
97	九十七	九十七	Jiu3shi2qi1
98	九十八	九十八	Jiu3shi2ba1
99	九十九	九十九	Jiu3shi2jiu3

Chinese numbers above one hundred

Now let’s just learn the words for bigger units and we can make the numbers easily by adding the appropriate numbers

Number	Name in English	Number in SImplified Chinese	Number in Traditional Chinese	Pronunciation	Examples	Comments
100	Hundred	百	百	Bai3	300 = 三百	Part of the "normal counting scale" both in English and Chinese, see below
1,000	Thousand	千	千	Qian1	9000 = 九千	Part of the "normal counting scale" both in English and Chinese, see below
10,000	Ten Thousand	万	萬	Wan4	43,000 = 四万三千	Part of the "normal counting scale" in Chinese, see below, not in English; by the way, did you know that the word "myriad" in English literally means "ten thousand"!
100,000	Hundred Thousand	十万	十萬	Shi2Wan4	140,000 = 一十五万	Not part of the "normal counting scale" in English or Chinese
1,000,000	Million	百万	百萬	Baiwan	1,000,797 = 一百万七百七	Part of the "normal counting scale" in English but not Chinese
10,000,000	Ten million	千万	千萬	Qian1wan4		Not part of the normal counting scale in English or Chinese
100,000,000	Hundred million	亿	億	Yi4yi		Part of the "normal counting scale" in Chinese but not English
1,000,000,,000	Billion	十亿	十億	Shi2yi4		Part of the "normal counting scale" in English but not Chinese
10,000,000,000	Ten billion	百亿	百億	Bai3yi4		Not part of the "normal counting scale" in English or Chinese

To help understand how to make use of these numbers, we need to quickly look at how we count in English. We use something called the “short counting scale” or the “long counting scale”. Together I’m referring to those as “normal counting scales”.

*Normal counting scales

This is my own made up word for the long and short counting scales. They sounds complex but actually they are not. Counting scales are systems used to name large numbers. The main two we need to know about for English are the long counting scale and the short counting scale. It is easy to convert between the two, but there can be problems when you see a number and don’t know which scale it is written in. That’s why it’s usually a good idea for translators to write out numbers explicitly and avoid any confusion. Just to be clear, the actual numbers are the same, it’s just how we refer to them that is different. I recommend two very cool videos about this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBbBbY4qvv4 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-52AI_ojyQ

The long counting scale for English numbers

The long counting scale was used in England up until fairly recently. It goes like this: tens (10), hundreds (100), thousands (1000), millions (1,000,000), thousand millions (1,000,000,000), billions (1,000,000,000,000), thousand billions (1,000,000,000,000,000), trillions (1,000,000,000,000,000,000 ), thousand trillions (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ), quadrillions, (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) and so on. Every extra set of three zeros gets a new name. While the UK used the long counting scale in the past, Americans always used the short counting scale. That’s why you might have heard that an American billion is less than an English billion. However, this is no longer true as the UK now uses the short counting scale along with the Americans. Beware that many people in the UK are not aware of this and still use the long scale!

The short counting scale for English numbers

This scale is officially used in the UK and the US, but beware that in the UK lots of people (including me until I researched this article) think that the UK still uses the long counting scale. The short counting scale goes like this: tens (10), hundreds (100), thousands (1000), millions (1,000,000), billions (1,000,000,000) (this is where they start to diverge), trillions (1,000,000,000,000), quadrillions (1,000,000,000,000,000) and so on.

Converting between the short counting scale and long counting scale

As long as you know which scale was applied (that’s usually the hard part), it’s really easy to convert between two sets of large numbers.  Here’s a handy conversion table:

Number as power of 10	Number	Short scale (This is the official system in UK and US)	Long scale (old system in UK, used in some other countries	Comments
10^0	1	one	one
10^1	10	ten	ten
10^2	100	hundred	hundred
10^3	1,000	thousand	thousand
10^6	1,000,000	million	million
10^9	1,000,000,000	billion	thousand million	this is where the scales start to diverge
10^12	1,000,000,000,000	trillion	billion
10^15	1,000,000,000,000,000	quadrillion	thousand billion
10^18	1,000,000,000,000,000,000	quintillion	trillion

Chinese counting scale

Now that we’ve looked at the normal counting scales for English, we need to take a look at the Chinese counting scale. It’s usually referred to in English simply as the “Chinese counting scale” or sometimes the “myriad scale”.

Notation for number	Number	Traditional Chinese	Simplified Chinese	Proncunciation	Comments
10^4	10,000	萬	万	Wan4	This number is often used to mean a "big number"; for example "10,000 years" is used to wish the emperor lives a long life.
10^8	100,000,000	億	亿	Yi4
10^12	1,000,000,000,000	兆	兆	Zhao4	Just to make things confusing, this word was taken for the Chinese term megabyte, thinking a megabyte was really huge and just had lots of zeroes. Now people sometimes think that this means 1,000,000.
10^20	100,000,000,000,000,000,000	京	京	Jing1	I've never once needed this number! So big.

Cultural uses of Chinese numbers

Numbers are frequently used with certain abstract meanings. For example 250 is used to mean “silly” or “stupid”. “All at 7’s and 8’s” means “extremely disorganized” and so on.  The number 4 is pronounced “si4” which sounds a bit like to die “si3”, so often the number 4 is used only to show bad luck. Lifts in China frequently don’t have a fourth floor! Similar to how we don’t use 13 very much in English culture. Notice also there’s another missing number “14”, still contains the number 4, even floors 40-49 wouldn’t be included.

[Creative Commons; from Wikipedia]

Chinese phone numbers

Phone numbers are easy to read and write, and to say. We just need to read out each digit one by one.

However, the character for one “Yi1” sounds a bit like “Qi1” over the phone, so is often replaced with “Yao1”.

Chinese dates

Chinese dates are very straightfoward, and usually written yyyy年mm月dd日

One point worth mentioning is that in Taiwan, they take year 1 as 1911 (the year of the founding of the Republic), so add 1911 to whatever the number is to get the date in the Western calendar. For example year 95 = 1911+95 = 2006, and so on.

Chinese Percentages

These are easy; written almost exactly like English “34%” for example or like “百分之X” (bai3fen4zhi1X meaning “X of one hundred parts”). If you can count, you can do percentages.

Chinese Fractions

Again, these are very easy; usually written just like in English with the same dividing line (3/5 for example) we use in English. Pronounced as “3 parts of 5” with the old character for “of” (三分之五 – San1fen4zhi1wu3 in my example).

Chinese finger counting

There are symbols you can use with one hand to count up to ten in Chinese. Many Chinese speakers assume they are internal and will make the symbols to try and help non-Chinese speakers, but actually we only go as far as 5 in English. So here are the extra finger signs, which are worth learning if you will be visiting China.

Part 2 – Advanced Chinese Numbers for Translators

 

Two written forms of Chinese numbers

Since simple characters like 一 (one) can easily be misread, Chinese also uses more formal numbers which contain many more strokes and are much easier to distinguish. In Chinese the regular numbers are usually referred to as “little writing”, and there is another set, very important for translators, called in Chinese “big writing”.

You will often see translators bizarrely translating the name of the big writing numbers as “capital letters” which is clearly wrong but very common. I notice that the Wikipedia article on Chinese numbers refers to them as “financial”, which is a good translation, but not totally correct. They are not always used exclusively for financial documents, and indeed there are financial documents which will use regular numbers, and general documents which use Chinese financial numbers.

Generally I like to use terms like “short set” and “written set”, or “full set” and such similar terms to distinguish the two. On contracts, when a number is written in both forms in the Chinese, I would normally translate into numerals and the written form of the numbers in English for clarity.

Value	Regular form (Traditional)	Extended (financial Form) (Traditional)	Regular form (Simplified)	Extended (financial Form) (Simplified)	Pronunciation	Comments
0	〇	零	〇	零	ling2	This can be pronounced "dong4" which means cave or hole in military radio communications.
1	一	壹	一	壹	Yi1	Often pronounced as "yao1" on radio and telephone calls; the character for "yao1" is 幺
2	二	貳	二	贰	Er4
3	三	叄	三	叁	San1
4	四	肆	四	肆	Si4
5	五	伍	五	伍	Wu3
6	六	陸	六	陆	Liu4
7	七	柒	七	柒	Qi1	Can be pronounced as 拐 (guai3) in military radio communications.
8	八	捌	八	捌	Ba1	As above can be pronounced "杯" (bei1)
9	九	玖	九	玖	Jiu3	As above can be pronounced "勾" (gou1)
10	十	拾	十	拾	Shi2	Very occassionally you will see the character 什 (shi2) but this can easily be changed to 1,000 see below so is avoided these days.
100	百	佰	百	佰	Bai3
1,000	千	仟	千	仟	Qian1

Numbers found only in the written character set

Some numbers are used for numbers that are used exclusively in the written character set; see the below table.

Value	In regular written set	In formal written set (simplified)	In formal written set (traditional)	Comments
20	二十	廿	廿	Nian4
30	三十	卅	卅	Sa4
40	四十	卌	卌
200	二百	皕	皕	This character wasn't in either of my two main reference dictionaries but I could find several entries about it online; I believe it's pronounced "bi4"; hardly ever used

Converting between written numbers and digits

Frequently documents such as bank statements will contain large numbers written in Chinese characters, and I have to calculate the equivalent form in English numbers. To do this can be complex, but here are some tools I find useful:

1,000,000,000,000	100,000,000,000	10,000,000,000	1,000,000,000	100,000,000	10,000,000	1,000,000	100,000	10,000	1,000	100	10	1
				亿	千万	百万		万	千	百	十
trillion	hundred billion	ten billion	billion	hundred million	ten million	million

I would write the number into this table and it helps ensure the correct totals. If a number isn’t mentioned I would assume it is a zero, and only write those numbers which are specifically mentioned. A couple of examples will help clarify further.

Concrete Examples

Here’s a screenshot of a business license which I translated. I’ve deleted some data to retain anonymity:

 

We can see the registered capital is: 壹仟万元正

Let’s start with the easy bit, 正 means “exactly, so we don’t need anything after the decimal point”. 元 means “yuan” (note that it doesn’t take a capital Y despite virtually everyone assuming it does take one; check the style guide of the FT or the Economist). So we can simplify to 壹仟万.

Putting it into the above table we get

1,000,000,000,000	100,000,000,000	10,000,000,000	1,000,000,000	100,000,000	10,000,000	1,000,000	100,000	10,000	1,000	100	10	1
				亿	千万	百万		万	千	百	十
trillion	hundred billion	ten billion	billion	hundred million	ten million	million
					1

We can see easily that we’ve got “1” unit of ten million; so it’s just written as “ten million” or “10,000,000” yuan.

Please note I’ve put a couple of deliberate errors (small ones that won’t be a problem for readers) into the text as my content keeps getting stolen. If you want to quote anything, might be worth contacting me first so I can check what you want to say is correct.