Qian (Chinese) (qian)

ChineseTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

Exactly 5 g in the modern Chinese market system; one tenth of a liang.

1 qian (Chinese) = 0.005 kilograms (exactly).

About the qian (Chinese)

Sitting between the liang and the fen, the qian was the working unit for small quantities of silver, medicine and spice. Its character also named a coin, and the weight is closely tied to the old coinage. Traditional Chinese medicine prescriptions have long been written in qian, and a regulation from 1979 treated the medicinal qian as exactly 3 g so that doses could be converted cleanly to metric.

Its size depends on the jin that it divides. Under the Republic from 1930 the qian was 1/160 of a jin, which gives 3.125 g, and a 1915 law gave about 3.73 g. After the People's Republic redefined the liang as one tenth of a jin, the qian became one tenth of a liang, which is the figure used here: 5 g. Hong Kong and Macau use about 3.78 g, and Taiwan uses 3.75 g.

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

Qian (Chinese) conversion chart

1 qian (Chinese) expressed in every other weight & mass unit:

More Chinese units

• liang (Chinese) (weight & mass)
• jin (Chinese) (weight & mass)
• dan (Chinese) (weight & mass)
• catty (Hong Kong) (weight & mass)
• tael (Hong Kong) (weight & mass)
• fen (Chinese) (length)
• cun (Chinese) (length)
• chi (Chinese) (length)
• zhang (Chinese) (length)
• li (Chinese) (length)
• mu (Chinese) (area)
• qing (Chinese) (area)
• shichen (time)
• yi / oku (East Asian) (counting & quantity)

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