Work with Chinese Number Characters: Learn to Count, Write the Date and Days of the Week.

Numbers have a special place in Chinese culture. They are very closely associated with one’s fortune. Let’s learn some Chinese and practice our numerical skills at the same time. Learning number characters offers a good introduction to the language, and to learning the names of dates and weekdays.

Numbers in Chinese characters

These actually cover the numbers from zero to 999 in Chinese characters

零 líng zero;

一 yī one; 二 èr two; 三 sān three; 四 sì four; 五 wǔ five;

六 liù six; 七 qī seven; 八 bā eight; 九 jiǔ nine; 十 shí ten ;

百 bǎi one hundred

It should come as no surprise that 十一shí yī is 11, or that 二十五

èr shí wǔ is 25

Quiz Part One

With that in mind, consider the following quiz.

Give the numerical equivalent of

(a) 四十九sì shí jiǔ

And this should not be too difficult

(b) 一百八十九yī bǎi jiǔ shí jiǔ

And even this WITHOUT PINYIN

But what about some arithmetic

(d) 四 plus三 = ?

Or to get into double digits

(e) 三十九 plus 二十六= ?

Or a multiplication question

(f) 八 times (x) 七= ?

Answers Below

The utility of numbers extends on to days of the week

Let’s add to our vocabulary

星期 xīngqī week ; 是 shì is ; 今天 jīntiān today ;

明天 míngtiān tomorrow and 昨天 zuótiān yesterday

The first day of the week is Monday (in China)

星期一xīngqī yī Monday, which means that the second day is

星期二 xīngqī èr

Quiz Part Two

So if: jīntiān shì xīngqīsì that is 今天是四星期

What can we say about

(g) 昨天 zuótiān or about (h) 明天 míngtiān

And if you have a big date on星期六, (i) what night should you show up?

Answers Below

This all works for dates as well.

We will need some new vocabulary, of course

月 yuè month; 年 nián year; 号 hào day or date

We should all know that the Beijing Olympics began on August 8, 2008

In Chinese this is二零零八年八月八号, èr líng líng bā nián bā yuè bā hào

Literally 2008 year, 8 month 8 day (or date) Eight is a very lucky number in China

So here is our final question:

If 今天是十一月一号 jīntiān shì shíyī yuè yī hào

(i) 昨天 zuótiān ?

Quiz Answers

(a) 49 (b) 189 (c) 999 (d) (4+3=7) (e) (39+26=65) (f) (8X7=56)

If today is Thursday, then yesterday was (g) Wednesday and tomorrow will be (h) Friday. Your date is on Saturday night

And be sure to watch out for Sunday, which is not星期七 xīngqīqī. Instead, it is

星期天xīngqītiān (i) today is November 1. Yesterday was October 31. Happy

Halloween!