Yards to Li (Chinese) (yd to li)

1 yard equals 0.0018288 li (Chinese) exactly.

1 yard = 0.0018288 li (Chinese)

How to convert yards to li (Chinese)

To convert yards to li (Chinese), multiply the number of yards by 0.0018288. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply li (Chinese) by 546.8066492 (rounded).

li (Chinese) = yards × 0.0018288

Example: 10 yards = 0.018288 li (Chinese).

About these units

Yard (yd)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

3 feet or 36 inches, exactly 0.9144 meters. Used for sports fields, fabric and short distances in the US and UK.

Yard descends from the Old English gerd or gyrd, meaning a branch, stave or measuring rod. It first appears in the late seventh-century laws of Ine of Wessex, though there it names a tax unit, the yardland. Around 959 to 963 King Edgar ordered that the measure held at Winchester be used throughout his realm, the earliest record of a prototype. A story that Henry I fixed the yard as the distance from his nose to his thumb is later folklore, and the true origin, whether pace, cubit or waist, remains speculative.

Britain defined the Imperial Standard Yard in 1824 as the distance between two marks on a brass rod at 62 degrees Fahrenheit. A fire in 1834 damaged the standard, a replacement was made in 1845, and the Weights and Measures Act 1855 recognized it. The 1959 international agreement then fixed the yard at exactly 0.9144 meter. Today it measures American and Canadian football fields, association football pitches and cricket pitches, appears on UK road signs for short distances, and is still used to sell fabric in the US and UK.

1 yard = 0.9144 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Yard; Wikipedia: Inch; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Li (Chinese) (li)

ChineseTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

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

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