How to Say How Much in Chinese: 多少钱, 几块, and Bargaining Phrases

By Ray Banks·October 18, 2026·Phrases

"How much?" in Chinese is 多少钱 (多少錢), pronounced duōshao qián, literally "how much money." Point at the thing and say it, and you'll get a number back. The rest of this post is about understanding that number (块, 元, 毛, and why Taiwan writes 塊), the casual variants you'll hear in markets (几块钱, 怎么卖), the handful of bargaining lines that work without making you look cheap, and the discount system that runs backwards from English. Everything here is used in both Mainland China and Taiwan unless marked otherwise.

How do you ask the price of something?

多少钱 is the answer, but there are four or five shapes it takes in real life, and the shape tells the seller how you're thinking about the purchase.

A detail that saves confusion: 多少 works for any quantity, not just money. 多少人 is "how many people," 多少钱 is "how much money." If you leave off 钱 and just ask 多少?, a seller will still understand you mean the price, because context does the work. And the counterpart 几 needs a measure word after it (几块, 几个, 几斤), whereas 多少 can go straight onto the noun. If numbers themselves are still shaky, read Chinese numbers 1 to 100 first; you can't use the answer to 多少钱 if you can't hear 四十五.

块, 元, or 塊? Understanding the answer

The seller's reply is a number plus a unit, and the unit is where learners get lost, because there are two of them for the same thing and they change with the script.

So the rule is: 元 on paper, 块 out loud, in both regions. The Mainland adds 毛 for tenths (and 分 fēn for hundredths, now almost extinct in cash). Taiwan prices are integers, so a Taipei answer will be something like 一百二十塊 or just 一百二. If a Mainland seller says 十块五 and you hear "ten kuai five," they mean 10.5, and the missing 毛 is normal. The habit of dropping the final unit runs through the whole system; how to count in Chinese covers it alongside the big numbers.

How do you bargain in Chinese without being rude?

First, where. Supermarkets, convenience stores, chain restaurants, department stores, and anywhere with a printed price tag: no bargaining, in either region. Tourist markets, souvenir stalls, small independent shops without tags, and wholesale markets on the Mainland: bargaining is expected and the first price assumes you'll counter. Taiwan's night markets mostly run on fixed prices, though a discount for buying several items is normal to ask for. When in doubt, ask once, politely, and read the reaction.

Now the discount system, because it runs opposite to English. 打折 dǎzhé means to discount, and the number that goes in the middle is the fraction of the price you pay, in tenths. 打八折 is "pay eight tenths," i.e. 20% off. 打五折 is half price. 打九折 is a mere 10% off. So a sign reading 八折 is not an 80% sale, and a seller offering 打九五折 is offering 5% off, which tells you where the negotiation is. Learners misread this in both directions for years.

How do you pay?

Once you've agreed a price, the words shift to payment, and this is where the two regions diverge most in daily practice.

One more restaurant word: 结账 / 結帳 jiézhàng works everywhere for "the check." And if you're reading a menu to find the prices in the first place, how to read a Chinese menu will get you through the dish names.

What do the characters in 多少钱 mean?

多少 is a question built from two opposites: "many-few," and the answer falls somewhere between them. Chinese does this constantly. 大小 (big-small) is "size," 长短 (long-short) is "length," 多少 (many-few) is "amount." Once you notice the pattern, a whole family of abstract nouns stops looking arbitrary.

钱 carries the 金 radical (metal) on the left, because the earliest money was cast bronze; 錢 in Traditional shows the full 金. 块/塊 has the 土 (earth) radical and means a lump or a piece, which is how it came to be a measure word for solid chunks (一块蛋糕, a piece of cake) and then, from the days of silver pieces, for units of currency. It's the same logic by which English got "a piece of eight." 元 means "origin" or "first" and is the formal unit; on Taiwanese banknotes you'll see the older 圓 ("round"), which is where the yen (円) and the won (원) also come from.

几/幾 is the small-number question word, and it has a grammar of its own: it always takes a measure word (几块, 几个, 几点), and it assumes the answer is somewhere under ten. That assumption is why 几块钱 sounds cheerful about a coffee and sarcastic about a phone. Our Chinese grammar guide treats 几 versus 多少 as a standalone point.

Do Mainland China and Taiwan talk about money differently?

The question is the same: 多少钱 in Shanghai, 多少錢 in Taipei, pronounced identically. The differences are in the units, the sub-units, the weights, and the way people pay.

• Units. Both say 块/塊 and write 元. Mainland currency is 人民币 rénmínbì (RMB, also called 元 or 块); Taiwan's is 新台币 / 新臺幣 xīn Táibì (NT dollars), 台幣 for short. If you need to distinguish them, say 人民币 or 台币 before the number.
• Sub-units. Mainland prices commonly include 毛 (tenths of a yuan): 三块五, 十二块八. Taiwan prices are whole dollars, so 塊 is always the last word you hear. In Taiwanese Hokkien, 箍 kho͘ is the dollar; you'll hear it from older vendors and see it in Hokkien-flavoured writing.
• Weights. 一斤 is 500 g on the Mainland and 600 g in Taiwan (the 台斤). Fruit prices per 斤 aren't directly comparable across the strait.
• Paying. The Mainland is a scan-to-pay society: 扫码 with WeChat Pay or Alipay covers everything from a street pancake to a hospital bill, and cash can be a mild inconvenience for the seller. Taiwan runs on a mix: cash, cards, the EasyCard (悠遊卡) for transit and convenience stores, and phone payment apps, with cash still completely normal at markets and small restaurants.
• Restaurant words. 买单 for the bill is a Mainland habit; Taiwan says 結帳. Receipts are 发票 in both, but only in Taiwan do they double as lottery tickets.

The app follows the same split. Choose Taiwan Mandarin and a story's 出租车 becomes 計程車 and its 便利店 becomes 便利商店, the same way the regional vocabulary in this post swaps.

Which phrase should I use? A comparison table

Mistakes to avoid

• Reading 打八折 as 80% off. It's 20% off: you pay eight tenths. 打五折 is half price and 打一折 would be 90% off, which is why you almost never see it. Work out what you pay, not what you save.
• 二块 instead of 两块. Two before a measure word is 两. 两块, 两百, 两斤. 二 survives only inside compound numbers (十二块, 二十块) and in ordinal or list contexts.
• Hearing 一百二 as 102. Spoken prices drop the trailing 十: 一百二 is 120, 三百五 is 350, 十块五 is 10.5. 102 has a 零 in it: 一百零二.
• 几块钱 for anything over about ten kuai. The question presupposes a small answer. For a jacket, a meal, or a taxi across town, use 多少钱.
• Bargaining where prices are fixed. Asking 便宜一点 in a 7-Eleven or a department store produces a polite, confused refusal. Save it for stalls and shops without price tags, and ask 打折吗 in ordinary shops if you want to test the water.
• Getting the tones of 买 and 卖 backwards. 买 mǎi (buy) is third tone; 卖 mài (sell) is fourth, and Traditional makes the difference visible: 買 versus 賣 with an extra 士 on top. 怎么卖 asks how they're selling; 怎么买 asks how to buy, which is a different question. The tones guide is worth a read if pairs like this still blur.

Is bargaining rude in Chinese culture?

Not in the places built for it, and quite rude in the places that aren't. At a Mainland tourist market or a wholesale clothing market, the opening price is a proposal, and a buyer who pays it without a word is not being polite, just careless. Sellers there enjoy a good-natured round of 太贵了 and 便宜一点, and the walk-away is understood by both sides as part of the dance. A reasonable counter is somewhere around half to two thirds of the first number for souvenir-type goods, less aggressive for food and anything with an obvious fixed cost. Keep it light. Once a price is agreed, backing out is the genuinely rude move.

Taiwan is a different rhythm. Retail is overwhelmingly fixed-price, night-market vendors post their prices, and haggling over a single item can feel a little embarrassing for everyone. What is normal is the volume discount: 買兩個可以算便宜一點嗎? ("if I buy two, could you do a bit better?"). The 算 framing turns it from a demand into an invitation for the seller to be generous, which is how most Taiwanese prefer the interaction to feel. And on the Mainland, the biggest cultural shift of the last decade isn't the bargaining but the payment: a phone and a QR code have replaced cash so completely that carrying notes now marks you as a visitor. The words in this post are stable; the wallet they describe has changed.

See these words in real stories

None of our free browser stories happens to use the exact question 多少钱, so I won't pretend otherwise. The money vocabulary around it turns up in several, with tap-to-look-up on every word:

• Going to Buy Groceries: 小明 works through a supermarket list and 在收银台，小明用现金付钱 ("at the checkout, Xiaoming paid in cash"). 付钱 fù qián is "to pay," 现金 is the cash from this post, and 收银台 shōuyíntái is the word on the sign above every till.
• The Shield and the Spear: the 自相矛盾 idiom story, set at a market stall where a merchant 在市场里卖东西 ("sells things in the market") and talks himself into a corner. It's 卖 in its natural habitat, and a reminder that sellers' claims deserve a 太贵了.

Both are short, graded, and recorded in Mainland and Taiwan Mandarin. Browse the rest of the free library at Chinese reading practice, or see every post in this series in the Chinese phrases guide. For the full traveller's kit around these phrases, survival Chinese for your China trip puts 多少钱 next to the other sentences you'll need on day one.

How common are these characters, really?

Measured across the 658 graded stories in the Literate Chinese catalog (141,730 hanzi occurrences, July 2026), 多 is the 45th most frequent character and 钱 is 103rd. 一 is 3rd and 点 (as in 一点) is 43rd. 少, 块, 元, 几, and 贵 don't make the top 150 in a story corpus, which tells you something useful: the question is built from a very common character (多) and a common one (钱), while the answer vocabulary (块, 元, 毛) belongs to shops rather than to narrative. That's a good argument for learning the price words as a deliberate set, since reading alone won't hand them to you as fast as it hands you 多 and 钱.