Height and Weight in Chinese: 一米七五 and 六十五公斤

Measurements are the numbers you meet on day one in a Chinese-speaking country: a doctor asks your height, a market scale shows a weight, a forecast gives a temperature, a sign gives a distance. They are also where a well-drilled learner can still stall, because height in particular is not said the way the metric system is written.

This guide covers the four everyday measurement patterns and the one that genuinely surprises people.

Countfu is listening practice for Chinese numbers: hear a number in Mandarin, type the digits. Take the free listening test.

Height in Chinese uses 米 as a pivot, not a decimal point

1.75 m is written with a decimal point in every language. Spoken Chinese does not use 点 here. Instead 米 (mǐ, metre) sits where the decimal point would be, and the centimetres follow as bare digits:

So 一米五四 is one metre and fifty-four centimetres, said as "one metre five four". Note what is not there: no 点, and no 五十四. The centimetres are a two-digit string, exactly like the part after a decimal point, but the metre word does the separating.

That last row is the trailing-unit elision at work. 一米六 is 1.60 m, not 1.06 m: a single digit after 米 is the tens of centimetres. If you need 1.06 m you have to say 一米零六, with 零 marking the gap.

Note the tone: 一米 is yì mǐ, not yī mǐ. 米 is third tone, so 一 shifts to fourth. Heights nearly always start with this, so it is worth getting right once.

Weight is a plain number plus 公斤

Weight is the easy one. It is an ordinary number followed by the unit, with no pivot and no elision to worry about:

公斤 (gōng jīn) is the kilogram. You will also hear 斤 (jīn) on its own, especially in markets, and it is half a kilogram, or 500 g. A price quoted per 斤 is therefore half what the same figure per kilo would be, which matters more for your wallet than for your grammar.

Temperature takes 点 and ends in 度

Unlike height, temperature does use the decimal word, and it closes with 度 (dù, degrees):

So 四十点五度 is 40.5 degrees. Body temperature, weather and cooking all use this shape. If you want to be explicit about the scale, 摄氏 (shè shì) is Celsius and goes in front, though in daily speech it is almost always omitted because Celsius is assumed.

Distance is a number plus 公里

公里 (gōng lǐ) is the kilometre, and it behaves like weight: a plain number plus the unit.

The same word covers speed in context, since 公里 per hour is usually shortened to just 公里 when a road sign or a car is the subject. You will also meet 里 (lǐ) in older or more literary usage, which is 500 m, exactly the same halving relationship that 斤 has to 公斤.

The four patterns side by side

Three of the four are ordinary numbers with a unit stuck on the end. Height is the one that behaves differently, and it is also the one you are asked about most often, which is why it is worth isolating.

How to train it

Measurements are short, which sounds easy and is exactly the problem: 一米七五 is over in about a second, and there is no redundancy to fall back on if you miss a syllable. Unlike a sentence, there is no context to reconstruct it from.

What works is hearing many of them back to back until the shapes separate on contact: the metre pivot, the plain number plus unit, the 点 before a single digit. At that point a doctor asking your height is a question you answer rather than one you decode.

Related reading

• Why 三百五 Means 350 in Chinese, Not 305: the elision rule that makes 一米六 mean 1.60 m.
• Chinese Numbers 1 to 100: A Listening Guide: the two-digit numbers every measurement is built from.
• Chinese Prices by Ear: Kuài, Máo, and Real Shop Talk: the other place 斤 and half-units cost you money.

Frequently asked questions