Catty
The catty, kati or jin (commonly in China), symbol 斤, is a traditional Chinese unit of mass used across East and Southeast Asia, notably for weighing food and other groceries in some wet markets, street markets, and shops. Related units include the picul, equal to 100 catties, and the tael (also spelled tahil, in Malay/Indonesian), which is 1⁄16 of a catty. A stone is a former unit used in Hong Kong equal to 120 catties and a gwan (鈞) is 30 catties. Catty or kati is still used in South East Asia as a unit of measurement in some contexts especially by the significant Overseas Chinese populations of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.
| Catty | |||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese name | |||||||||||||||||
| Chinese | 斤 | ||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||
| Vietnamese name | |||||||||||||||||
| Vietnamese | cân | ||||||||||||||||
| Korean name | |||||||||||||||||
| Hangul | 근 | ||||||||||||||||
| Hanja | 斤 | ||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||
| Japanese name | |||||||||||||||||
| Kanji | 斤 | ||||||||||||||||
| Hiragana | きん | ||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||
| Malay name | |||||||||||||||||
| Malay | kati | ||||||||||||||||
| Indonesian name | |||||||||||||||||
| Indonesian | kati | ||||||||||||||||
| Catty | |
|---|---|
| Unit system | traditional Chinese unit |
| Unit of | mass |
| Symbol | 斤 |
| Conversions | |
| 1 斤 in ... | ... is equal to ... |
| Chinese unit | 16 兩 10 两 (in Mainland China) |
| China | 500 g |
| Japan Korea Taiwan Thailand | 600 g |
| Hong Kong | 604.78982 g |
| Malaysia | 604.79 g |
| Singapore | 604.8 g |
| Conversions (imperial) | |
| 1 imp 斤 in ... | ... is equal to ... |
| Hong Kong Malaysia Singapore | 1+1/3 lb |
The catty is traditionally equivalent to around 1 1⁄3 pound avoirdupois, formalised as 604.78982 grams in Hong Kong,[1] 604.79 grams in Malaysia[2] and 604.8 grams in Singapore.[3] In some countries, the weight has been rounded to 600 grams (Taiwan,[4] Japan, Korea[5] and Thailand). In mainland China, the catty (more commonly translated as jin within China) has been rounded to 500 grams and is referred to as the market catty (市斤 shìjīn) in order to distinguish it from the "metric catty" (公斤 gōngjīn), or kilogram, and it is subdivided into 10 taels rather than the usual 16.
References
- "Weights and Measures Ordinance". Laws of Hong Kong.
- "Weights and Measures Act 1972". Laws of Malaysia. Archived from the original on 2014-02-01.
- "Weights and Measures Act". Statutes of the Republic of Singapore.
- Weights and Measures in Use in Taiwan Archived 2010-12-29 at the Wayback Machine from the Republic of China Yearbook – Taiwan 2001.
- "Regulation on Approval and Notification of Herbal (crude) Medicinal Preparations, Etc". Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.