Chinese Numbers Explained

Huge Numbers

亿

This will be a short section just to introduce two more powers of 万, the first is a hundred million, 万 * 万 =

亿

yì

, = 100,000,000 (or 1,0000,0000). The number 亿 follows all the same rules as 万, so you form numbers the same way as before. To make numbers bigger than 亿, use 千, 百, and 十 together in front of the 亿, to form numbers up to nine hundred ninety nine billion, nine hundred ninety nine million, nine hundred ninety nine thousand, nine hundred ninety nine: 999,999,999,999 (or 9999,9999,9999).

九千九百九十九 * 亿	(9999 * 1,0000,0000)
九千九百九十九 * 万	(9999 * 1,0000)
九千九百九十九	(9999)

兆

Finally, let's end with one trillion:

兆

zhào

= 10¹² = 1,000,000,000,000 (1,0000,0000,0000). This is the largest number you are likely to encounter in everyday, non-specialized contexts. With this number and the smaller multiples we can go up to the quadrillions: 兆 * 千 = a trillion times a thousand: one quadrillion = 10¹⁵. As with 亿, we can go even higher using multiples of 千, 百, and 十 with 兆: 9999 * 兆 + 9999 * 亿 + 9999 * 万, + 9999 = 9999,9999,9999,9999. Try reading this number aloud:

九千九百九十九兆九千九百九十九亿九千九百九十九万九千九百九十九

Breaking it down:

九千九百九十九 * 兆	(9999 * 1,0000,0000,0000)
九千九百九十九 * 亿	(9999 * 1,0000,0000)
九千九百九十九 * 万	(9999 * 1,0000)
九千九百九十九	(9999)

A Brief Theoretical Digression

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It is worth taking a short detour here to explore how large numbers are constructed in a language. Pretty much all human languages express numbers as combinations of multiples of ten. First you have the unit numbers – the "ones" – and then the "tens", the "hundreds", the "thousands", etc. Notice these are all distinct, unique words representing different multiples of ten. Generally languages will use unique names for multiples of ten in the first few places: ones, tens, hundreds, thousands. Theoretically you could use a unique name for every multiple of ten, just keep making up new names for each decimal place. For a number with twenty places you'd have twenty unique names to remember! But most languages do something different, at some point they start reusing the lower multiples: multiplying them together to make larger multiples. English does it after you reach the thousands: after "one thousand" we say "ten thousand", and then "hundred thousand". But after a hundred thousand we don't say a "thousand thousand", instead we introduce another unique name: million. With this system we still need unique names for larger powers of ten, but at least you don't have to have one for every single decimal place, only one new name every 3 places: thousands, millions, billions, trillions, etc. The only difference in Chinese is that the thousands unit is reused in larger numbers, too, so Chinese numbers have repeating groups of four places, and thus you only need a unique name for every multiple of ten thousand. So while we have names for thousand, million, billion and trillion, in Chinese it's only 万, 亿 and 兆. This table illustrates the multiples of 10 up to one quadrillion, see if you can spot the pattern:

The Powers of 10 up to a Quadrillion
1	one	一	yī
10	ten	十	shí
100	hundred	百	bǎi
1,000	thousand	千	qiān
10⁴	ten thousand	万	wàn
10⁵	hundred thousand	十万	shí wàn
10⁶	million	百万	bǎi wàn
10⁷	ten million	千万	qiān wàn
10⁸	hundred million	亿	yì
10⁹	billion	十亿	shí yì
10¹⁰	ten billion	百亿	bǎi yì
10¹¹	hundred billion	千亿	qiān yì
10¹²	trillion	兆	zhào
10¹³	ten trillion	十兆	shí zhào
10¹⁴	hundred trillion	百兆	bǎi zhào
10¹⁵	quadrillion	千兆	qiān zhào

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Huge Numbers

A Brief Theoretical Digression

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