Kilometers to Li (Chinese) (km to li)
1 kilometer equals 2 li (Chinese) exactly.
How to convert kilometers to li (Chinese)
To convert kilometers to li (Chinese), multiply the number of kilometers by 2. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply li (Chinese) by 0.5.
li (Chinese) = kilometers × 2
Example: 10 kilometers = 20 li (Chinese).
About these units
Kilometer (km)
1,000 meters. The standard unit for road distances in most countries.
A name for 1,000 meters took a while to settle. In 1793 France's National Convention made the metre the sole French unit of length, and the first proposed name for the thousand-metre multiple was millaire. Everyday French usage then leaned on the myriametre, 10,000 meters, well into the 1800s. The Netherlands adopted the kilometre in 1817, under the local name mijl, and made it the only official unit of that size in 1867. In 1935 the CIPM dropped the myria- prefix, which left the kilometre as the standard unit for road-scale distances.
Kilo- is the SI prefix for a thousand, and the kilometre is now the preferred unit for land distances in most of the world, with the United States, the United Kingdom and Liberia among those that still use the mile. One kilometre is about 0.621 mile. The main span of Lisbon's 25 de Abril Bridge, at 1.013 km, gives a sense of the scale. Even its pronunciation has been argued over: in 1970 Australia's Metric Conversion Board made stress on the first syllable official, although Prime Minister Gough Whitlam argued for stress on the second. Military slang in several countries calls it a klick.
1 kilometer = 1,000 meters (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Kilometre; Wikipedia: Metric prefix; BIPM: history of the metre
Li (Chinese) (li)
The modern Chinese 'mile', set at exactly 500 meters. Imperial-era li varied widely, from about 323 m under the Tang to roughly 540-650 m under the Qing.
Field and earth are the two components of the character for li, an apt picture of a distance about the size of a village. Chinese travel writing, military records and poetry counted roads in li, and phrases such as the ten-thousand-li Great Wall or thousand-li horses turned it into a figure of speech for great distance. English writers sometimes call it a Chinese mile, though it is nearer a third of an English mile.
Its length followed the chi and the number of chi counted per li. Wikipedia lists about 358 m for the Western Zhou, about 416 m for the Han, about 323 m for the Tang and 537 to 645 m for the Qing, when some usage counted 1,800 chi per li instead of 1,500. Republican li ranged around 500 to 545 m. The figure used here is the modern value of exactly 500 m, which is 1,500 modern chi.
1 li (Chinese) = 500 meters (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Li (unit); Wikipedia: Chinese units of measurement
Related conversions
- Li (Chinese) to kilometers (reverse)
- Kilometers to meters
- Kilometers to centimeters
- Kilometers to millimeters
- Kilometers to inches
- Kilometers to feet
- Kilometers to yards
- Kilometers to miles
- Kilometers to micrometers
- Kilometers to nanometers
- Kilometers to nautical miles
- Kilometers to pixels (CSS)
- Kilometers to light-years
- Meters to li (Chinese)
- Centimeters to li (Chinese)
- Millimeters to li (Chinese)
- Inches to li (Chinese)
- Feet to li (Chinese)
- Yards to li (Chinese)
- Miles to li (Chinese)
See all length units.