Li (Chinese) to Centimeters (li to cm)
1 li (Chinese) equals 50,000 centimeters exactly.
How to convert li (Chinese) to centimeters
To convert li (Chinese) to centimeters, multiply the number of li (Chinese) by 50,000. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply centimeters by 0.00002.
centimeters = li (Chinese) × 50,000
Example: 10 li (Chinese) = 500,000 centimeters.
About these units
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
Centimeter (cm)
One hundredth of a meter. Used for body measurements, clothing and everyday objects.
Scientists, rather than shopkeepers, gave the centimeter its place. In 1832 Carl Friedrich Gauss proposed a system of absolute units built on length, mass and time, choosing the millimeter, milligram and second. In 1873 a committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, whose members included James Clerk Maxwell and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), recommended the centimeter, gram and second instead. That CGS system dominated physics for decades, until the metre-kilogram-second system replaced it in the mid-twentieth century and led to SI.
CGS units proved awkward for rooms and buildings, which run to hundreds of centimeters, but the centimeter itself never went away. It is still the everyday unit for height, clothing and small objects, and it appears in map scales and rainfall reports. An adult fingernail is roughly one centimeter wide, and a milliliter is defined as exactly one cubic centimeter. An inch is exactly 2.54 centimeters. The CGS system itself survives mainly in theoretical physics and astrophysics, where Gaussian units are still common.
1 centimeter = 0.01 meters (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Centimetre-gram-second system of units; Wikipedia: Centimetre; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors
Related conversions
- Centimeters to li (Chinese) (reverse)
- Li (Chinese) to meters
- Li (Chinese) to kilometers
- Li (Chinese) to millimeters
- Li (Chinese) to inches
- Li (Chinese) to feet
- Li (Chinese) to yards
- Li (Chinese) to miles
- Meters to centimeters
- Kilometers to centimeters
- Millimeters to centimeters
- Inches to centimeters
- Feet to centimeters
- Yards to centimeters
- Miles to centimeters
- Micrometers to centimeters
- Nanometers to centimeters
- Nautical miles to centimeters
- Pixels (CSS) to centimeters
- Light-years to centimeters
See all length units.