Miles to Li (Chinese) (mi to li)
1 mile equals 3.218688 li (Chinese) exactly.
How to convert miles to li (Chinese)
To convert miles to li (Chinese), multiply the number of miles by 3.218688. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply li (Chinese) by 0.3106855961 (rounded).
li (Chinese) = miles × 3.218688
Example: 10 miles = 32.18688 li (Chinese).
About these units
Mile (mi)
5,280 feet or 1,760 yards, exactly 1,609.344 meters. This is the statute (international) mile used on US and UK roads.
A thousand paces gave the mile its name. It descends from the Latin mille passus, the Roman mile, by way of Old English mil and Middle English myle. For centuries after Rome, miles of many lengths coexisted; a sixteenth-century Mercator map, for example, shows small, medium and large Flemish miles on a single scale bar. The English statute mile was fixed by an Act of Parliament under Elizabeth I in 1593, which declared that a mile contains eight furlongs, or 5,280 feet.
The 1959 international yard and pound agreement made that mile exactly 1,609.344 meters. A slightly longer US survey mile, about 1,609.347 meters, lingered in American land surveys and was slated for retirement from 1 January 2023. Today the mile is the road unit of the United Kingdom, the United States, Liberia and Myanmar, along with several territories such as the Bahamas, Belize, Guam and the US Virgin Islands. In Canada it survives chiefly in rail transport and horse racing.
1 mile = 1,609.344 meters (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Mile; Wikipedia: Foot (unit); NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors
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 miles (reverse)
- Miles to meters
- Miles to kilometers
- Miles to centimeters
- Miles to millimeters
- Miles to inches
- Miles to feet
- Miles to yards
- Miles to micrometers
- Miles to nanometers
- Miles to nautical miles
- Miles to pixels (CSS)
- Miles to light-years
- Meters to li (Chinese)
- Kilometers to li (Chinese)
- Centimeters to li (Chinese)
- Millimeters to li (Chinese)
- Inches to li (Chinese)
- Feet to li (Chinese)
- Yards to li (Chinese)
See all length units.