Phone numbers and prices in Chinese

Phone numbers: one digit at a time

A phone number is not read as a quantity. Each digit is said on its own, usually in the groups the number is printed in, and 1 is often 幺 yāo instead of 一 yī, a syllable that stands apart from every other digit. Room numbers and other codes are read the same way: room 1012 is 幺零幺二 yāo líng yāo èr .

Mainland mobile numbers have eleven digits and begin with 1 (dialled from abroad as +86 1nn nnnn nnnn). Landlines have a city area code, such as 10 for Beijing, dialled with a leading 0 inside China. Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan have their own numbering plans and country codes.

Prices: what is printed and what is said

China's currency is the renminbi (人民币 rénmínbì). Its unit is the yuan, divided into ten 角 jiǎo or a hundred 分 fēn, though the fen has little use today. Each unit has a written name and a spoken one:

Three habits show up at the till. The last unit is dropped: 两块五 means two yuan fifty, with the 毛 understood. Two is 两 before 块, because 块 counts like a measure word: 两块, not 二块. And big round prices take the same short forms as other numbers: 两百五 for 250, 一千二 for 1,200. The national numerals standard gives 35.5 yuan as 三十五元五角 in writing; a shopkeeper would say 三十五块五.

Written amounts on cheques and receipts use the formal characters (叁拾伍圆伍角), covered on the writing page. And prices are where lucky 8s cluster; see lucky numbers.

Price examples above combine the checked engine's numbers (三十五, 一百零八) with the money words; the spoken short forms follow the same rule as the short number forms on the big numbers page.