Talk:Chinese yuan/oldversion

The below is the pre-merge version of Yuan, before it was deleted so that Yuan (disambiguation) could be moved to Yuan. Mango juice^talk 16:09, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This article concerns the currency unit. For other uses, see Yuan (disambiguation).

Yuan (simplified Chinese: 元; traditional Chinese: 元 or 圓; pinyin: yuán; Wade–Giles: yüan, Japanese: yen or en) is, in the Chinese language, the base unit of a currency; for example, the US dollar is Mei yuan (美元). However, in international context, yuan as an English word refers to the Renminbi (RMB¥, CN$), the official currency of the People's Republic of China. The English pronunciation is /ju:'æn/, although in Chinese the word is one syllable. In some parts of China, it is colloquially known as the kuai. The names of Japanese and South Korean currencies are derived from the Chinese character yuan.

As with the Chinese numerals, this character has two forms — a less formal form (元) and a more formal form (圓 or 圆) used to prevent alterations and accounting mistakes. The Japanese yen was originally also written 圓, but is now represented by the simplified character 円. The Korean won used to be written 圓, but is now written as 원 in hangul exclusively.

One yuan is divided into 10 jiao (角) or colloquially mao (毛). One jiao is divided into 10 fen (分). In Cantonese, jiao and fen are called ho (毫) and sin (仙).

Yuan in Chinese literally means a round object or round coin. In Qing dynasty, Yuan was a silver coin in round shape.

Shop prices in mainland China and Taiwan are usually marked with 元 after the digits. In mainland China, Ұ (a Y with one crossbar) before the digits is also common. This sign is not used in Hong Kong and Macau in favor of the dollar sign ($). For Hong Kong dollars, symbol HKD and HK$ are used internationally. In Macau, "MOP" is also usually used for its currency, the pataca.