7.9: Money

G.E. Morrison, who wrote a book called An Australian in China, about his journey across southwest China to northern Burma at the very end of the 19th century, described how he managed his money:

Money in Western China consists of solid ingots of silver, and copper cash. The silver is in lumps of one tael or more each, the tael being a Chinese ounce and equivalent roughly to between 1400 and 1500 cash. … From Hankow to Chungking my money was remitted by draft through a Chinese bank. … I carried some silver with me; the rest I put up in a package and handed to a native post in Chungking, which undertook to deliver it intact to me in Yunnan city, 700 miles away, within a specified period. … Money is thus remitted in Western China with complete confidence and security. [Morrison 1902: 95]

Round coins (often bearing a niánhào or ‘reign name’) with square holes in the middle (round said to be symbolic of heaven, square, of earth) were in use in China from several centuries BCE. In later times, these were often called ‘cash’, a translation of qián. Carried in strings of 1000, they were the medium of exchange for small purchases. Morrison also carried lumps of silver, useful for larger transactions. These were measured in taels [from Malay tahil], a weight that often translates the Chinese liǎng. Liǎng is still a regular measure of weight in markets in China. Originally 16 liǎng made up a jīn, but in the modern system, it is 10. Jīn is usually translated with another term derived from Malay, the ‘catty’. Paper money, reimbursable for silver (at least in those periods when the economy was well managed), has been in circulation in China for well over 1000 years. Dollars, that come into circulation in China from the 16th century, were not US dollars but Spanish (or Mexican).

Modern currencies

Nowadays, currency on the Mainland is the Rénmínbì ‘people’s-currency’, often abbreviated in English as ‘RMB’. Its main unit is the yuán, called kuài colloquially and translated as ‘dollar’ or ‘Chinese dollar’. Below the yuán is the jiǎo (máo colloquially) ‘ten cents’ and the fēn ‘cent’. Thus, in speech, $1.25 is yí kuài liǎng máo wǔ ‘one dollar two dimes five’ (rather than a dollar and 25 fēn). Bills (as of 2003) have values of one, two, five, ten, fifty and a hundred. There are some small sized bills for values below one yuán. Coins are for low values only (some of which duplicate bills), including a one yuán piece, a 5 máo (50 cents), one máo (10 cents) and various very small denominations.

During the height of the communist period, foreign currencies were exchanged not for RMB, but for wàihuìjuàn, ‘Foreign Exchange Certificates’ or simply ‘FEC’. FEC were denominated like RMB and had the same official value, but since FEC were required for the purchase of foreign goods, they gained value on unofficial ‘black’ markets. FEC were abandoned in the early 90s. [The Chinese government, apparently, sold their remaining FEC to the government of neighboring Burma [Myanmar], who adopted the FEC system at about the time the Chinese abandoned it.]

In Taiwan (the ROC), the unit of currency is the Xīn Táibì, called the ‘new Taiwan Dollar’ in English (and abbreviated $NT). Like its Mainland counterpart, it is called the yuán (kuài colloquially), with smaller units called jiǎo (máo) and fēn. Hong Kong also retains its own currency, called Gǎngbì. Current (9/05) exchange rates for RMB are approximately 8.1 to the US dollar; for $NT, approximately 31 to the dollar, and for HK$, approximately 7.7 to the dollar.

In Unit 2, you learned that money, qián, is counted with kuài ‘yuan; dollar’. In fact, in formal language, yuán itself is the M-word, so that yí kuài qián is usually written (and sometimes spoken) as yì yuán (一圆 or 一元 ; both characters are used, but the latter is more common).

Dollars and cents

Currency is subdivided into the following units (which are all M’s):

informal, spoken	literal meaning	formal, written	value
kuài	‘lump; piece’	yuán  ‘round’	RMB 1.00
máo	‘hair; small amount’	jiǎo	RMB 0.10
fēn	‘part’	fēn	RMB 0.01

Note that qián is the noun, kuài, máo, fēn etc. are M’s by which qián is counted: 

yí kuài qián  yí kuài RMB 1	liăng kuài qián liăng kuài  RMB 2	sān kuài qián sān kuài  RMB 3	wŭ kuài qián wŭ kuài RMB 5	shí kuài qián shí kuài RMB 10
liǎng máo RMB 0.2	bā máo RMB 0.8	sān fēn <qián> 3 cents	jiǔ fēn <qián> 9 cents	liǎng máo wǔ  25 cents

Notes

Kuài and máo are the normal spoken forms. However, yuán and jiǎo, while primarily written forms that appear on currency, on menus, and bills, are, in certain formal settings like hotels and banks, sometimes spoken: eg: sì yuán wǔ jiǎo ‘Y4.50’.

Exercise 6

Practice citing the following prices until fluent:

1.	30 cents	11.	25.00
2.	50 cents	12.	11.85
3.	1.00	13.	35.00
4.	1.40	14.	39.95
5.	2.00	15.	19.35
6.	85 cents	16.	15 cents
7.	95 cents	17.	75 cents
8.	3.60	18.	1.85
9.	9.95	19.	99.00
10.	15.00	20.	102.00

How many?

a) Duōshao

The opposites duō ‘many’ and shǎo ‘few’ combine to form the question word duōshao ‘how many’ (with qīngshēng on the second syllable).

Jīntiān yǒu duōshao xuéshēng?	How many students today?
Yǒu èrshísān ge.	23.
Zuótiān ne?	And yesterday?
Zuótiān yǒu èrshísì ge!	24, yesterday.
Duōshao qián?	How much money?
Liǎng kuài.	Y2.00.

b) Jǐ ge?

When the expected number is low, the question word is not duōshao, but jǐ + M. Smaller than expected numbers and amounts may attract the adverb zhǐ ‘only’.

Yǒu duōshao xuésheng?	How many students are there?
Yǒu èrshísì ge.	24.
Yǒu jǐ ge lăoshī?	How many teachers are there?
Zhǐ yǒu yí ge.	Only one.
Nǐ yǒu jǐ kuài qián?	How much [money] do you have?
Wǒ zhǐ yǒu yí kuài.	I only have a dollar.
Wǒ de jiā lí jīchǎng zhǐ yǒu sān gōnglǐ.	My house is only 3kms from the airport!
Nà hěn jìn!	That's close!

c) Prices

Prices can be asked with duōshao (usually without M) or jǐ + M; the item in question can be placed first, with the sense of ‘cost’ left implicit:

Bĭjìbĕn duōshao qián?	How much are notebooks?
Yǔsǎn jǐ kuài qián?	How many dollars for an umbrella?

Where items are sold by particular amounts, Chinese will use an appropriate M:

Sān kuài bā yí ge.	$3.80 each (‘for one’).
Wǔ máo yí fèn.	$0.50 each. [newspapers]
Shí’èr kuài sān yì běn.	$12.30 each [notebooks]

 

Making a purchase

In China, shopping often takes place under adverse conditions: markets are noisy and crowded; vendors often have strong local accents; tickets are sold through small windows jammed with customers. So it pays to reduce grammatical complexity, and speak in short, sharp phrases. We will start with food and drink. To earlier drink vocabulary, we can add some fruit. (For health reasons, Chinese peel fruit before eating – many even peel grapes.)

píngguǒ	xiāngjiāo	xīguā	mángguǒ	chéngzi
apples	bananas	watermelons	mangoes	oranges
yí ge	yí ge yí chuàn	yí kuài /piàn yí ge	yí ge	yí ge

These are purchased as wholes (yí ge), as parts (yí kuài ‘a piece’, yí piàn ‘a slice’), or bunches (yí chuàn ‘a bunch; cluster’). Or they are bought by weight (typically by the jin or ‘catty’ in China).

yì jīn	‘a catty’	½ a kilogram; 1.2 lbs
yì liǎng	‘a tael’	10 liang in a jin
yì gōngjīn	‘a kilogram’	2 catties, or 2.2 lbs
yí bàng	‘a pound’

Notes

a) Not so long ago, the liǎng was 1/16 of a jīn (hence the term ‘Chinese ounce’).

b) People say èr liǎng ‘2 taels’ rather than the awkward *liǎng liǎng .

Other items:

bǐnggān	miànbāo	gāodiǎn	miànjīnzhǐ	bīngjilín
biscuits	bread	pastries	tissues	icecream [stick]
bāo	gè	gè	bāo	gēn

Notes

a) bǐng is the generic for tortilla or pancake like foods; gān means ‘dry’.

b) gāo is generic for ‘cakes’; diǎn is ‘a bit’ or ‘a snack’.

c) bīngjilín, also pronounced bīngqilín (and sometimes bīngjilíng) ‘ice-cream’ (with jilín ~ qilín, etc. representing English ‘cream’); ice-cream comes on a stick (yì gēn), in tubs (yì xiǎobēi) and in cartons (yì hé).

Exercise 7

What would you say to purchase the following items in the amounts indicated?

Work with a partner, if possible, with one of you buying and the other selling. Keep the small talk to a minimum. The buyer should begin with a perfunctory (but friendly) greeting (hǎo), then state the item – pointing to it if possible – and the number needed. The seller is likely to volunteer the price (per unit, if relevant), and the buyer can then repeat it to himself, or for confirmation, and close with: Hǎo, jiu zhèiyàngr ba. You would be expected to bargain a bit at street stalls (cf. §8.4) – less so in shops. For now, you are buying small things and you won’t lose much!

1.  apple  1  / 0.30 cents each

2   bananas  1 bunch / 2.50 for a bunch  

3.  apples  1 catty  / 1.50 for a catty  

4.  biscuits  1  pack  / 3.00 a pack  

5.  spring water  1 bottle / 1.00 a bottle  

6.  cola   2 bottles / 5.00 for 2 bottles  

7.  bread  1 loaf  / 4.00 a loaf  

8.  bun   3  / 1.50 for 3  

9.  orange juice  1 bottle / 1.75 a bottle  

10. watermelon  1 slice  / 0.80 per slice

11. watermelon  whole  / 1:30 per jin

12. cigarette  1 pack  / 4.00 per pack  

13. bananas  2  / 0.60 for 2  

14. tissue  2 packs / 3.00 per pack

15. ice-cream  1 tub  / 1.40 per tub  

16.  Mènglóng  1 stick  / 6.00 per stick. 

(Mènglóng is the Chinese translation of ‘Magnum’, the name of a Wall’s [brand] of chocolate covered vanilla icecream, one of a number of ‘popsicles’ sold widely at street stands and small shops throughout China.)