【Learn Chinese】Let’s talk about the Chinese Currency

What is the Chinese Currency and how do you talk about it in Chinese?
Talking about Chinese money can be a bit confusing. The official name for China’s currency is ‘Renminbi’ 人民币 (Rénmínbì), which literally translates into English as ‘The People’s Currency’. It is often abbreviated to RMB.

‘Yuan’ 元 (Yuán) is the unit of measurement for the RMB, but is also used to refer to the currency as a whole: Chinese Yuan.
This also has an abbreviation CNY, which is also used as the international code for the Chinese currency. The symbol for the Yuan is ¥.

To confuse us all further, in spoken Chinese ‘yuan’ is also called ‘kuài’ 块.
If we use a comparison to British currency then, ‘Renminbi’ would be like “Pounds Sterling” which is the official name for the currency and ‘yuan’ would be like “Pounds”.
‘Kuai’ is a bit like saying ‘quid’, an informal way of saying pounds, except that ‘Kuai’ is used more commonly. ‘Yuan’ is used more rarely in casual conversations.

There are also smaller denominations of Chinese currency:
1 yuan is worth 10 ‘jiǎo’ 角 (also generally referred to as ‘máo’ 毛 in spoken Chinese).
Furthermore, 1 ‘jiao’ can then divided in 10 ‘fēn’ 分, but fen are rarely used in China today.

The People’s Bank of China introduced the Renminbi in December 1948. Initially only bank notes were issued, and they began to circulate in China. This was just under a year before the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949.
The new government aimed to end the hyper-inflation that had been in a problem during the final years of the Republic of China. In 1955 the yuan was revalued: 1 new yuan was equal to 10,000 old yuan.