Money and Shopping in China
The official currency of the People's Republic of China is the renminbi (??? "People's Money"), often abbreviated RMB. The base unit of this currency is the yuan (?), international currency code CNY. All prices in China are given in yuan, usually either as ¥ or ?. The RMB is not legal tender in the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau, both of which issue their own currencies.
The yuan is currently hovering at ¥6.6 to the U.S. dollar and slowly rising in value.
Cheat Sheet
- 10 fen (?) is 1 jiao (?)
- 10 jiao is 1 yuan (?), the base unit
- yuan is commonly called kuai (?)
- jiao is commonly called mao (?)
- 10 is shí (十)
- 100 is bǎi (百)
- 1000 is qiān (千)
- 10000 is wàn (万)
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The official subdivisions of the yuan are the jiao (?), at 10 jiao to the yuan, and the fen (?) at 10 fen to the jiao. The fen is extinct nowadays. A coin worth ¥0.10 will thus say ?? ("1 jiao"), not "10 fen", on it. But in colloquial Mandarin, people often say kuai (?) instead of yuan, and the jiao is also dubbed the mao (?). A price like �3,7 would thus be read as "3 kuai 7 mao" (although the trailing unit is usually omitted).
When dealing with numbers, note that for example wu bai san, literally "five hundred three", means 530 or "five hundred three tens", with the trailing unit dropped. The number 503 would be read as wu bai ling san, literally "five hundred zero three". Similarly yi qian ba, literally "one thousand eight", means 1800. When using larger numbers, keep in mind that Chinese has a word for ten thousand, wàn (万), and thus for example 50000 becomes wu wan, not wu shi qian.
A lot of Chinese currency will be in the form of bills ? even small change. Bills are more common in some areas, coins in others, but both are accepted anywhere. Even the jiao, at just one tenth of a yuan, exists as both a bill (the smallest) and two different coins. Conversely, one yuan exists both as a coin and as two different bills. You should be prepared to recognize and handle either version.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about China