Chinese Numerals Converter (一二三 and 壹贰叁)

What this tool does

Chinese writes numbers with characters rather than digits, and it does so in two registers. The everyday register — 一二三四五六七八九十, plus 百 hundred, 千 thousand, 万 ten-thousand and 亿 hundred-million — is what appears in prose and speech. The financial register replaces the same digits with the more elaborate 壹贰叁肆伍陆柒捌玖 and the units 拾佰仟, so that an amount cannot be changed by adding a stroke.

The tool converts in both directions. It also handles the one genuinely awkward part of the system: where a zero has to be written so that the number is not misread, and where it must not be.

Method

Element	Rule
Digits 0–9	零一二三四五六七八九 (financial: 零壹贰叁肆伍陆柒捌玖).
Units	十 10, 百 100, 千 1000 (financial: 拾 佰 仟).
Ten-thousands	万 104, 亿 108, 万亿 1012 — Chinese groups by four digits, not three.
Teens	10–19 read 十, 十一, 十二 … ; the initial 一 is omitted in the everyday form, kept in the financial form (壹拾).
Zeros	A single 零 stands in for a gap: 105 is 一百零五, 10001 is 一万零一. No 零 is written where the groups already make the value unambiguous.

Example

Digits	Everyday	Financial
10	十	壹拾
105	一百零五	壹佰零伍
1001	一千零一	壹仟零壹
10100	一万零一百	壹万零壹佰
1234567	一百二十三万四千五百六十七	壹佰贰拾叁万肆仟伍佰陆拾柒

Ten thousand, not a thousand

The single most important difference from English is the grouping unit. English groups in thousands — thousand, million, billion — while Chinese groups in ten thousands:

Value	Chinese unit	English grouping
10,000	万 (wàn)	ten thousand
100,000,000	亿 (yì) — 10,000 万	one hundred million
1,000,000,000,000	万亿 (wàn yì) — 10,000 亿	one trillion

This is why 1234567 is 一百二十三万四千五百六十七 — literally “one hundred twenty-three ten-thousand, four thousand five hundred sixty-seven”. Reading it as “one million two hundred thirty-four thousand…” is the English habit, and it produces the wrong grouping. The number is the same; the unit boundaries are not.

The zero rule

Zeros need care because Chinese does not write one 零 per zero digit. The rule is: write 零 once for a run of zeros, and only when that run falls between two non-zero digits. Zeros at the end of a group are dropped entirely.

Number	Written	Rule applied
105	一百零五	one zero between 一 and 五 → one 零
1005	一千零五	two zeros, still one 零
150	一百五十	trailing zero → no 零 at all
1001	一千零一	zero run between digits → 零
10100	一万零一百	the zero is inside the 万 group boundary

The last row is the subtle one: 10100 is not “一百零一万” — the 万 applies to the leading 1, and the 0 in the thousands place introduces a 零 before 一百. Getting the placement of the unit symbol relative to the zero wrong is the most common error, and it is what the round-trip test on this page is checking.

Everyday and financial forms

Chinese has two numeral systems, and they are not interchangeable in use. The everyday forms — 一二三四五六七八九十百千 — are what you read in normal text. The financial forms — 壹贰叁肆伍陆柒捌玖拾佰仟 — use characters that are harder to alter, because the everyday forms are simple strokes that a dishonest hand can change: 一 (one) can become 二 (two) or 十 (ten) with one stroke, and 三 (three) into 五 (five).

That is the entire purpose: financial numerals exist for cheques and contracts, where a written amount must not be forgeable. The paired table is worth learning if you deal with Chinese invoices:

Digit	Everyday	Financial	Digit	Everyday	Financial
1	一	壹	6	六	陆
2	二	贰	7	七	柒
3	三	叁	8	八	捌
4	四	肆	9	九	玖
5	五	伍	0	零	零

The unit symbols also change: 十 → 拾, 百 → 佰, 千 → 仟. 万 and 亿 keep their forms.

The 两 variant

There is a third form for two: 两 (liǎng), used with measure words — 两个人 (two people), 两本书 (two books) — while 二 is used for counting and in compound numbers (二十二, 二百). This tool converts number to text, so it produces 二; 两 is a grammatical choice that depends on the noun that follows, which a numeral converter cannot know.

If you are generating a phrase rather than a numeral, 两 is usually what a native speaker would say for “two of something”. Treat the output of this tool as the numeral form, not as a finished sentence.

Beyond the supported range

The largest unit supported here is 万亿 (ten thousand 亿, i.e. 10¹²). Beyond that, Chinese continues with 兆 (10¹⁶) and 京, but usage varies by region and era, and a converter that silently picks one convention would be guessing. Values above the supported range are reported as out of range rather than converted with an invented unit.

Reading it back

The reverse direction — Chinese characters to digits — is more forgiving, because it does not have to choose between conventions. Both the everyday and financial forms are accepted, so a value copied from a cheque and a value copied from an article both parse. The one thing it cannot do is resolve ambiguity between 两 and 二, since both mean two; it reads either as 2.

Frequently asked questions

Go deeper

Longer explanations of the problems this tool solves:

Numeral systems: Unicode digits and Roman numerals

Sources

• The Chinese numeral system as described in standard references on Chinese orthography (CJK numerals, Unicode block U+4E00–U+9FFF).
• The financial/capital form (大写) widely mandated for amounts on cheques and financial documents in the PRC.