Counting money

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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

  • 3.8
  • 10.2
  • 9.5
  • 1.7
  • 五 十 50.5
  • 七 十 二 72.4
  • 一 百 100.5
  • 五 百 500.3
  • 两 千 两 百 2000.2
  • 三 千 一 百 3100.1

If the smaller units are only in tens, you can just say the number of tens. So 3.86 RMB is "三 八". Also this way of speaking is normally only used in matters with less than 100.

  • Three kuai eight (3.8)
  • Ten kuai two (10.2)
  • Nine kuai five (9.5)
  • One kuai seven (1.7)
  • 五十 Fifty kuai five (50.5)
  • 七十二 Seventy-two kuai four (72.4)


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

  • 八 毛 六3.86



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

  • Three kuai

块 (kuài) is the more common, informal way to talk about money. More formally you can use 元 (yuán) 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 (kuài) is appropriate in more situations than "bucks" or "quid", though.

See also

Sources and further reading

Books