Learning Materials · Measurement
Chinese Units, Converted
dùliànghéng huànsuàn — "converting length, capacity and weight"
Every converter does metric to imperial. This one does 市制 — the market units China still runs on. A price board reading 12元/斤 is not twelve yuan a kilo; it is twelve yuan for 500 grams.
jīn
qiānkè
1 斤 (jīn) = 0.5 千克 (qiānkè)
斤THE one to know. Produce is priced per 斤 in every market, and a 斤 is 500 g — so a price board reads half what a foreigner assumes.
The six worth memorising
Learn these and you will read a Chinese price board, rental listing or market stall correctly without doing any arithmetic.
- yī jīn500 gHalf a kilo. The market price you see is per 斤.
- yī liǎng50 gA tenth of a 斤. Noodles and dumplings are sold this way.
- yī chǐ33.3 cmExactly one third of a metre. Fabric is cut by it.
- yī lǐ500 mHalf a kilometre — not a mile.
- yī mǔ666.7 m²One fifteenth of a hectare. All farmland talk is per 亩.
- yī píngmǐ1 m²How apartments are advertised — usually gross area, not usable.
公 and 市 — two prefixes worth knowing
Many units come in pairs, and the first character tells you which system you are in. 公 (gōng) is short for 公制 gōngzhì, the metric system — so 公斤 is the "metric 斤", a kilogram. It is not "official", which is the sense 市 (shì) carries in 市斤 — the market-standard 斤 of 500 g.
The mainland dropped most 公- names when it standardised its legal units: the 1984 State Council order kept only 公斤, 公里 and 公顷, and enforcement followed with GB 3100-93 from July 1995. 公尺 and 公分 are still normal in Taiwan, which also writes 公釐 where the mainland writes 毫米.
Reviewed 2026-05-27