Cash is king, even though China is now crazy for mobile payments. Either way, though, mastering how to say quantities of money is vital!
Before you learn how to count money in Chinese, make sure you know how to ask "how much money" when you go shopping in China.
Subj. + 多少钱 ?
Chinese has a specific structure for talking about quantities for money:
Number + 块 + Number + 毛
Note that "2.5 RMB" reads as 两块五 (.
If the smaller units are only in tens, you can just say the number of tens. So "3.8 RMB" is 三块八 (). This way of giving the price is normally only used for amounts under 100 RMB.
When the smallest unit is 2, it reads as 二 () instead of 两 ().
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
And if there's no smaller unit, e.g. "3 RMB," you can just say:
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.