How to Count in Chinese: 1 to 10,000 and Beyond
Chinese numbers may be the most logical part of the whole language: learn 13 words and you can count to ten thousand, with zero exceptions to memorize.
English makes you memorize "eleven", "twelve", "twenty", "fifty" — none of which follow the rules. Chinese doesn't do that. Once you know 1–10, every number up to 99 builds itself, and three more words (百, 千, 万) take you to 99,999,999. Here's the whole system.
The numbers 0–10
New to these characters? Start with the basics in our Chinese numbers 1–10 post, or drill them as free flashcards.
11–99: the numbers build themselves
Say the tens digit, then 十, then the ones digit. That's it.
Compare that to English's "eleven" and "twenty-five" — Chinese kids learn to count years earlier than English-speaking kids partly because of this regularity.
Hundreds and thousands
Two new words: 百 bǎi (hundred) and 千 qiān (thousand). One wrinkle: when a zero appears in the middle of a number, you say 零 once to mark the gap.
万: the 10,000 mindset
Here's the one genuinely different idea. English groups large numbers by thousands (thousand → million → billion). Chinese groups by ten-thousands: 万 wàn = 10,000, and everything stacks on it.
When you hear a big number, mentally chunk it in fours, not threes: 250,000 is 25|0000 = 二十五万 "twenty-five wàn".
二 vs 两: the two twos
Chinese has two words for "two". 二 èr is for counting and math: 一、二、三; 第二 (second). 两 liǎng is for quantities — use it before measure words: 两个人 (two people), 两杯咖啡 (two coffees), 两百 (two hundred). If you're saying "two of something", it's almost always 两.
Ordinals, dates, money, phone numbers
- Ordinals: put 第 dì in front — 第一 (first), 第三次 (the third time).
- Dates: pure numbers — 五月三号 (May 3rd, "five-month three-number"), 二零二六年 (the year 2026, digits read out).
- Money: 块 kuài is the spoken unit — 二十五块 (25 yuan/NTD).
- Phone numbers: read digit by digit, and 一 often becomes yāo to avoid mishearing.
Number culture: lucky 8, unlucky 4
八 bā (eight) sounds like 发 fā "to prosper", so 8s are prized in phone numbers and license plates. 四 sì (four) sounds like 死 sǐ "death", so many buildings skip the 4th floor. And 250 (二百五 èr bǎi wǔ) is a classic insult meaning "idiot" — say 两百五 for the price instead.
Make them automatic
You'll never think about numbers again once you've met them a few hundred times in context — prices, dates, ages, story titles. That's what graded reading does: the Literate Chinese app has 600+ stories matched to the words you know, where numbers show up constantly and naturally. Or start right now with free stories in your browser.
