The origin of the ancient Chinese unit system can be traced back to the legendary Yellow emperor who created the first measurement units, according to the Liji a.k.a. Book of Rites. The Yellow emperor a.k.a. Yellow Thearch (Chinese name: Huangdi) in Chinese religion is a deity and his reign dates are 2698/2697 – 2598/2597 BC. According to the Xiao Ery and the Kongzi Jiayu length units were derived from the human body so these have caused inconsistencies. However, these inconsistencies were solved by Yu the Great who unified the length measurement. It is worth mentioning that in Shang Dynasty tombs the rulers with decimal units have been found.
During the Zhou dynasty, the measurement units were inconsistent from state to state due to the fact that the king conferred nobles with powers of the state so each of them modified the measurement units. The units were standardized by Qin Shi Huang who also unified China. The measurement units were still in use during the Han dynasty and were documented in the Book Of Han.
The ancient Chinese unit system consists of length, area, mass (weight), and volume (capacity) units. There are 16 length units, 8 area units, 7 mass (weight) units, and 10 volume (capacity) units. The length units are tou, thsan, pou, li, kyo, fen, yin (yan), zhang, pou, tchi, cun (tsouen), fen, li, hao, su, and hoe. The base unit is tchi where 1 [tchi] is equal to 0.32 [m]. The largest unit in the system is thou where 1 [thou] is equal to 450000 [tchi] or 144000 [m]. The smallest unit in the system is hoe where 1 [hoe] is equal to 0.000001 [tchi] or \(3.2 \times 10^{-7}\). The area units are ching, king, meou, kish, fen, lyi, kung, and hao. The based unit is 1 [meou] which is equal to 6000 [square tchi] or 614.4 \(\left[\mathrm{m}^2\right]\). The largest unit was ching where 1 [ching] is equal to 100 [meou] or 61440 \(\left[\mathrm{m}^2\right]\). The lowest unit is hao where 1 [hao] is equal to 0.001 [meou] or 0.6144 \(\left[\mathrm{m}^2\right]\).
The mass (weight) units are dan (shih), tan, jun (kwan), jin (tchin), liang, zhu, and shu. The based unit was jin where 1 [jin] is equal to 0.596816 [kg]. The largest unit was dan (shih) where 1 [dan (shih)] is equal to 120 [jin (tchin)] or 71.61792 [kg]. The smallest unit is shu where 1 [shu] is equal to 0.0000260417 [jin (tchin)] or 0.000015542 [kg].
The volume (capacity) units were: ping, chei, hou, to, cheng, yo, kho, chao, co and quei. The base unit was cheng where 1 [cheng] is equal to 0.00103544 \(\left[\mathrm{m}^3\right]\). The largest unit was ping where 1 [ping] is equal to 500 [chengs] or 0.51772 \(\left[\mathrm{m}^3\right]\). The smallest unit was quei where 1 [quei] is equal to 1e-4 [cheng] or 0.000000103544 \(\left[\mathrm{m}^3\right]\).
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