Lesson 9 · Foundational Components

Hundred, Thousand: 百 / 千

Lesson 5/6 got you to 99 using only digits and 十. Two more characters take you into genuinely useful territory for travel — hotel prices, train tickets, addresses, budgets — almost none of which stay under 100.

Your two new components

百

bǎi

hundred

6 strokes

千

qiān

thousand

3 strokes

Quick recall — click each card to flip it:

百

bǎi — hundred

千

qiān — thousand

千 closes a loop from Lesson 8, where 年's etymology mentioned in passing that a stroke was once added to 人 ("person") to create a phonetic stand-in — that stand-in is 千 itself:

一+人=千

qiān — thousand. 一 marks it as a number; 人 (Lesson 1) contributes sound, not meaning — the extra stroke traditionally read as "extending" the count all the way to a thousand. (Wiktionary: 千)

百, honestly: one piece named, not taught. 百 is also 一 (marking it as a number) plus a second piece, 白 ("white") — but 白 is purely phonetic here, contributing sound rather than meaning "white" in any way relevant to "hundred." Per the standard this course has held since Lesson 4: naming 白 here is for accuracy, not an instruction to learn it. It isn't entering the component pool, and you won't be quizzed on it.

十 stands alone; 百 and 千 don't. 十 by itself already means "ten" — no 一 needed. But "hundred" and "thousand" on their own (一百, 一千) require the leading 一: 百 or 千 alone isn't how you say "100" or "1000" in normal use. It's a small, easy-to-forget asymmetry, and exactly the kind of thing worth knowing before you guess wrong on a price tag.

Neither 百 nor 千 has a stroke sequence I'm confident enough to state outright. Look up the animated mainland-standard order for each at StrokeOrder.com before practicing them by hand.

Where the payoff shows up

The same multiply-before/add-after logic from Lesson 5 extends straight through:

一 + 百 → 一百 yī bǎi — 100

三 + 百 + 六十 → 三百六十 sān bǎi liù shí — 360

一 + 千 → 一千 yī qiān — 1,000

三百六十 breaks down exactly like 二十三 did in Lesson 5, just one tier up: (3×100) + (6×10) + 0. Anything you can price, count, or number up to 9,999 is now readable with characters you already know.

Check your recall

Which character means "thousand"?

千 (一+人) uses 人 for what purpose?

To say "100" on its own, you need:

三百六十 (三+百+六+十) represents the number:

Go further

Etymology sources for both characters are linked inline. For the rigorous version, see the Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters.

Out in the world: try reading any price, room number, or ticket cost written in characters rather than Arabic numerals — hotel receipts and some traditional menus are the most likely place you'll meet one.

Something unclear, or want to go deeper on any of this? Ask your teacher — that's what these sessions are for.