Catty (Hong Kong) (catty)

ChineseTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

Exactly 1⅓ pounds (about 604.79 g). The legal Hong Kong catty, used in markets.

1 catty (Hong Kong) = 0.6047898267 kilograms (approximately).

About the catty (Hong Kong)

Kati, the Malay word behind catty, reached English through traders along the South China coast, and the Hong Kong version is the one most travellers meet in wet markets today. In 1884 Hong Kong law tied the catty to British weights as exactly one and one third avoirdupois pounds. With the pound taken as 0.45359265 kg, that gives 604.78982 g, the figure used here, which is a little over 600 g.

The Hong Kong catty is 16 taels and 100 of them make a picul of about 60.48 kg. That makes it heavier than the 500 g jin of mainland China, where the market system was redefined in 1930 and again in 1959 to ten liang per jin. Chinese weights themselves have wandered, from about 250 g in the Pre-Qin period to about 590 g under the Ming and Qing, with 16 liang per jin throughout. Vegetables, meat and herbs in Hong Kong are still often sold by the catty, and shops in Malaysia and Singapore use almost the same value, 604.79 g and 604.8 g respectively.

Sources: Wikipedia: Catty; Wikipedia: Chinese units of measurement; Wikipedia: Hong Kong units of measurement

Catty (Hong Kong) conversion chart

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