Talk:Chi (unit)

Art of Bowling?
isn't that qi?Adavies42 (talk) 02:31, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Also units of angle: du, zhang, chi and cun
Some net sources and other Wikipedias state that the Chinese units du (unit) zhang (unit), chi (unit), cun (unit) are/were not only units of length, but also units of angle. See f.e. the French WP: fr:Du (unité), fr:Zhang (unité), fr:Chi (unité), fr:Cun (unité). At present, this isn't discussed at all in any of the related articles in the English WP, therefore we should add it. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 15:50, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Chi Vs. Zhang
I agree with the above sections request for further clarification on different units of length. The second paragraph - one sentence long, reads:

"In its ancient and modern forms, the chi is divided into 10 smaller units known as cun (the "Chinese inch") and 10 chi together form one Zhang"

Soooooooo... what does this mean?

1 Chi = 10 cun. 10 cun = 1 Zhang.

So is 1 Chi equal to 1 Zhang?

Researching further it appears the answer is "It depends, but probably/usually: No." Obviously, clarification is required or remove the reference to the Zhang. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.27.25.217 (talk) 04:22, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose that Shaku (unit) be merged into Chi (unit). The content in the Shaku (unit) article can easily be explained in the context of Chi (unit), and the Chi (unit) article is of a reasonable size that the merging of Shaku (unit) will not cause any problems as far as article size or undue weight is concerned. --Talitiainen (talk) 01:26, 4 July 2017 (UTC)


 * I oppose doing this without some careful discussion. Of course, as you suggest, fundamentally the topic of this article is the Chinese traditional unit of length written 尺, which is rendered cun in Pin'yin, shaku in Japanese, and something else in Korean. I am not sure that a reader with no prior knowledge would understand the relation at all, and example sentences like this ("In Taiwan, chi is the same as the Japanese shaku, ...") suggest that some of the writers aren't too clear about it either. If anything, I think it would be better to have an article "Traditional Chinese units of length" (with the advantage that the title is in English), with a table of the unit characters (尺寸...) with their various readings and (modern) definitions. One column of which would be any Malay names (like "catty", but I'm not sure of any for length units). Imaginatorium (talk) 03:38, 4 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Well, this can be a place for "some careful discussion", I think. I suggested the merger because other pages such as Cun (unit) are not divided into, for example, Chinese cùn, Korean chi / chon, and Japanese sun. There are pages with tables, such as Chinese units of measurement, Korean units of measurement, Japanese units of measurement, Taiwanese units of measurement, Hong Kong units of measurement, and Singaporean units of measurement. It would be nice if there is a page with a name like Asian units of measurement for comparing all of them. --Talitiainen (talk) 06:45, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose merge on the grounds that there is sufficient complexity in the history of the term (including variation in its actual length) that keeping the pages separate is justified. Klbrain (talk) 21:48, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Just to respond to this comment: it is, it seems to me, utterly illogical. By keeping the treatment separated, you ensure that a curious reader has no chance of understanding the connections (basically: 尺 ). Imaginatorium (talk) 05:03, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

distance measured by a human hand, from the tip of the thumb
the ancients must have had some huge hands! Could it be twice that length? Gjxj (talk) 18:22, 8 March 2023 (UTC)