Suzhou numerals converter: write any number in Suzhou numerals (蘇州碼子, huāmǎ), the merchants' numerals still seen on Chinese market price tags and handwritten invoices, with the place and unit on the second line, or read Suzhou numerals back into ordinary numbers.
Counting rod numerals converter: see any whole number or decimal as ancient Chinese counting rods (算籌) on a counting board, with units upright as in the Sunzi Suanjing or flat as in Unicode, zero as an empty square or a circle, and negative numbers slashed or in red and black rods. Copy the Unicode counting rod characters.
Suzhou numeral calculator: add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers written in Suzhou numerals, counting rods, Chinese or financial numerals and ordinary digits, see the working laid out in rods on a counting board, and get the answer in every notation.
Chinese numerals converter: numbers to Chinese characters and back, in everyday (小写) and financial (大写) numerals, simplified or traditional, with the uppercase amount for a Chinese cheque or invoice (人民币…元整) and the cheque date written by the People's Bank of China rules, plus pinyin.
| Value | Suzhou | Rods upright | Rods flat | Chinese | Financial | Pinyin |
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In a run of 1s, 2s and 3s, Suzhou writes every second one as 一 二 三. 〸 〹 〺 stand for 10, 20 and 30.
| Value | Traditional | Simplified | Pinyin | Financial |
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Chinese groups digits in fours: 12,3456,7890 is 十二億三千四百五十六萬七千八百九十. The mainland writes 1012 as 万亿; Taiwan uses 兆.
| Amount or date | Written | Why |
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A shorthand for numbers used by Chinese merchants, also called 蘇州碼子 (Sūzhōu mǎzi) or 花碼 (huāmǎ, "fancy numbers"). They grew out of the counting-rod numerals of the Southern Song dynasty and are the only form of rod numerals still in use, mostly for prices in Chinese markets and on handwritten invoices. Unicode names them "Hangzhou numerals", a mistake it has since acknowledged.
The first line holds the digits. The second names the place of the first digit, then the unit. In 〤〇〢二 over 十元, the 〤 is in the tens (十) of yuan (元), so it reads 40.22 yuan. Zeros at the start and end are left out, because the second line fixes where the digits sit.
Upright strokes side by side are easy to misread: 〢〡 could pass for 〣. So in a run of 1s, 2s and 3s, every second one is written flat as 一, 二 or 三. 21 is 〢一 and 123 is 〡二〣.
Small sticks, usually bamboo but also wood, bone or ivory, that Chinese officials and mathematicians laid out on a board to calculate, for some two thousand years. Each column is one place, and numbers are added, multiplied and divided by moving rods, much as on an abacus, which replaced them in the Ming dynasty.
So that neighbouring digits don't run together. The Sunzi Suanjing says "one is upright, ten is flat": units, hundreds and ten-thousands stand upright, while tens and thousands lie flat. For 6 to 9, one rod across the top (or standing on top) counts as five.
An empty column meant zero on the board; written texts later used a circle, 〇. Positive numbers were laid in red rods and negative ones in black. On paper, a slanted stroke across the last digit marked a number as negative.
Unicode calls the flat forms (𝍠 to 𝍨) "unit digits" and the upright forms (𝍩 to 𝍱) "tens digits", the opposite of the Sunzi rule. Choose "Units flat" to match the Unicode characters exactly.
Very few fonts include the counting rod characters (U+1D360 to U+1D371), so many phones and computers show empty boxes. This page carries its own small font for them. The copied text is still the standard characters.
Complex forms of the digits, 大写 (dàxiě), such as 壹 for 一 and 贰 for 二. Everyday numerals are so simple that one stroke turns 一 into 二 or 十, so banks, cheques, receipts and contracts write amounts in financial numerals, which are much harder to alter.
In financial numerals right after 人民币, ending in 元整 when there are no jiao or fen. Zeros inside the number are written 零, once per run. ¥1,409.50 is 壹仟肆佰零玖元伍角 and ¥325.04 is 叁佰贰拾伍元零肆分. The date is written in financial numerals too, with 零 before some months and days so no digit can be added.
In the system in everyday use, 1012, as it still is in Taiwan, Japan and Korea (some older systems used it for 106). In mainland China 兆 has also been used for 106, as the metric prefix mega-, so official documents avoid it and write 万亿 for 1012. Simplified output here does the same.
Learn how Suzhou numerals, counting rods and Chinese numerals work: the digits 〡〢〣〤〥〦〧〨〩 and their rod shapes, the two-line Suzhou format, the Sunzi rule for upright and flat rods, how zero and negative numbers were shown, the places 十百千萬億兆, financial numerals, and the rules for writing amounts and dates on Chinese cheques.