Yi / Oku (East Asian) (yi)

ChineseTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

One hundred million (10⁸), written 億 / 亿 in Chinese and Japanese (oku) and Korean (eok). East Asian counting groups numbers by myriads.

1 yi / oku (East Asian) = 100,000,000 pieces (exactly).

1 yi / oku (East Asian) = 100,000,000 pieces

About the yi / oku (East Asian)

Chinese counting does not group digits in threes. It groups them in fours, so 1,234,567,890 is read as 12 yi, 3456 wan, 7890. Wan is 10,000 and yi is 10,000 times wan, giving 100,000,000. In Japanese the same character is read oku and in Korean eok. The yi is therefore a pure number with no physical dimension, and its base here is simply one.

This myriad system differs from English, which builds on thousands. One million is 100 wan, and one billion in the short scale is 10 yi, since these languages have no native words for powers of one thousand. Ancient texts wrote 10,000 squared as wan wan before yi became the name. Older usage differed, and yi once stood for 10 to the 5th. The next unit, zhao, is 10 to the 12th in Taiwan, Japan and Korea, but mainland China has used it for a million, so official documents avoid it.

Sources: Wikipedia: Chinese numerals; Wikipedia: Myriad

Yi / Oku (East Asian) conversion chart

1 yi / oku (East Asian) expressed in every other counting & quantity unit:

Unit1 yi / oku (East Asian)
Pieces100,000,000
Dozens8,333,333.333
Lakhs1,000
Millions100
Crores10
Billions (short Scale)0.1
Pairs50,000,000
Hundred1,000,000
Gross694,444.4444
Thousand100,000
Trillions (short Scale)0.0001
Score5,000,000
Half Dozens16,666,666.67
Quadrillions1×10⁻⁷
Reams200,000
Moles1.660539067×10⁻¹⁶
Baker's Dozens7,692,307.692
Small Gross833,333.3333
Great Gross57,870.37037
Myriads10,000
Arab (Indian)0.1
Kharab (Indian)0.001
Billions (long Scale)0.0001
Quires4,000,000

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