Counting money

Cash rules everything around us, and in China there's no exception. Mastering how to say quantities of money is vital!

Structure

Chinese has a specific structure for talking about quantities for money:

Number + 块 + Number + 毛

Examples

• 三 块 八 毛 3.8
• 十块两毛 10.2
• 九块五毛 9.5
• 一块七毛 1.7
• 五十块五毛 15.5
• 七十二块四毛 72.4
• 一百块五毛 100.5
• 五百块三毛 500.3
• 两千两百块两毛 2.000,2
• 三千一百块一毛 3.100,1

If the smaller units are only in tens, you can just say the number of tens. So 3.86 RMB is "三 块 八"。而且这种说法一般只用于100以内的事。

• 三 块 八Three kuai eight
• 十块二Ten kuai two
• 九块五Nine kuai five
• 一块七One kuai seven
• 五十块五Fifty kuai five
• 七十二块四Seventy-two kuai four

The first number is the amount of whole RMB (or dollars etc.), and the second is the amount smaller units (e.g. cents). So 3.86 RMB is

• 三 块 八 毛 六3.86

And if there's no smaller unit, e.g. 3 RMB, you can just say:

• 三 块Three kuai

块 is the more common, informal way to talk about money. More formally you can use 元 in exactly the same way. This is similar to the difference between "dollars" and "bucks" in American English, or "pounds" and "quid" in British English. 块 is appropriate in more situations than "bucks" or "quid", though.

See also

• Indicating a Number in Excess
• Approximating with sequential numbers

Sources and further reading

Books

• A Practical Chinese Grammar For Foreigners (外国人实用汉语语法) (pp. 88-9) →buy
• Integrated Chinese: Level 1, Part 1 (3rd ed) (pp. 233-4) →buy