Jin (Chinese) to Kilograms (jin to kg)

1 jin (Chinese) equals 0.5 kilograms exactly.

1 jin (Chinese) = 0.5 kilograms

How to convert jin (Chinese) to kilograms

To convert jin (Chinese) to kilograms, multiply the number of jin (Chinese) by 0.5. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply kilograms by 2.

kilograms = jin (Chinese) × 0.5

Example: 10 jin (Chinese) = 5 kilograms.

About these units

Jin (Chinese) (jin)

ChineseTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

Exactly 500 g in the modern Chinese market system, used in grocery markets across China. Often called a catty.

Anyone buying fruit or vegetables in a Chinese market is quoted prices per jin, and in English the unit is often called a catty, a word from the Malay kati. The historical jin shifted a great deal. Tables give about 250 g before the Qin, 220 g in the Eastern Han, 440 g in the Northern Wei, around 661 g in the Tang, 633 g in the Song and Yuan, and about 590 g in the Ming and Qing.

Modern values are tied to political decisions more than to ancient practice. The Republic's 1930 system set the jin at 500 g with 16 liang, and that mass was retained in mainland China after 1959, which is the figure used here. Hong Kong keeps a jin of about 604.79 g, and Taiwan uses 600 g. A jin is 10 liang on the mainland but 16 elsewhere, and 100 jin form one dan, also called a picul.

1 jin (Chinese) = 0.5 kilograms (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Jin (unit); Wikipedia: Chinese units of measurement

Kilogram (kg)

Metric (SI)Current unit

The SI base unit of mass. Since 2019 it is defined by fixing the value of the Planck constant, replacing the old platinum-iridium cylinder in Paris.

Oddly for a base unit, the kilogram began life as a derived one. In 1793 revolutionary France defined the grave as the mass of one litre of water, and a decree of 1795 then replaced it with the kilogramme, a name built from the Greek khilioi (a thousand) and gramma, a Late Latin word for a small weight. In 1799 a platinum cylinder, the Kilogramme des Archives, became the physical standard, matching a cubic decimetre of water at its densest, around 4 degrees Celsius. In 1889 the metric community adopted a platinum-iridium cylinder made in 1879, the International Prototype of the Kilogram, nicknamed Le Grand K.

The kilogram is still the only SI base unit with a prefix in its name. Because SI forbids stacked prefixes, a millionth of a kilogram is a milligram rather than a microkilogram, so every mass prefix is attached to the gram. Calibrating every national standard against one object in a vault near Paris meant that all of them drifted relative to it, so in November 2018 member states voted to tie the kilogram to a fixed value of the Planck constant. The change took effect on 20 May 2019. Day to day nothing shifted, but the definition no longer depends on a single piece of metal.

The kilogram is the reference unit for weight & mass on this site.

Sources: NIST: Kilogram introduction (SI redefinition); Wikipedia: Kilogram

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