5.1. COUNTING 229
ples:
20 = 2 × 10 =
90 = 9 × 10 =100 =
, formally wriĴen as
120 = 100 + 2 × 10 =
780 = 7 × 100 + 8 × 10 =1000 =
, formally wriĴen as
1300 = 1000 + 3 × 100 =
4826 = 4 × 1000 + 8 × 100 + 2 × 10 + 6 =10000 =
, formally wriĴen as.The rules for composition are actually reasonably close to the west-
ern system of writing large numbers, except that instead of replacing the
order (the ”1” in 1, 10, 100, 1000, etc) with the factor (”2” in 20, ”8” in 800,
etc), the factor is simply added in front of the order, effectively indicating
a multiplier.
However, one significant difference is found in orders of magni-
tude: in western systems we raise by a power of 1000 for large numbers
(i.e. a million is 1000 × 1000, a milliard is 1000 × 1000 × 1000, a billion is
1000 × 1000 × 1000 × 1000, etc.), but in the Chinese counting system large
numbers are powers of , 10,000:
10,000 isThe biggest number that still uses is 99,999,999:
.The number that follows this is a number equal to × , called
,
with a value of 100,000,000.The next order number is × , which is
.The next order number is × , which is
.There are in fact quite a few of these higher order counters, although of
course the higher you get, the less likely people are to know them, and the
less meaningful the number becomes (because we cannot visualise such
large numbers).