Do Chinese have their own way of writing numbers?  I live in China, whenever I write numbers (01234566789) on a piece of paper by hand, Chinese people are generally confused and can’t understand what I wrote.

中国人有自己的数字书写方式吗？我生活在中国，每次我在纸上手写数字(01234566789)时，中国人通常都觉得很困惑，不明白我写的是什么。

以下是Quora网友的评价：

Melvin Tai

Yes, the Chinese has their own numbering system.

Chinese generally confused written numbers. Are you sure?

Is it your writing that is causing the problem? Look, who are the winners of the math Olympiad, no matter which year, or which country won, it is always Chinese students!!! If they are confused with the numeric system, how did they won?

是的，中国人有自己的数字系统。

中国人通常看不懂你写的数字。你确定？

是你自己书写有问题吧？你看奥数比赛的获胜者，无论什么时候，无论哪个国家胜出，选手都是中国孩子！！如果他们看不懂数字，他们怎么可能赢？

Peter Kaye

Yes they do have different numbers to ours, but I don't understand you saying that they are generally confused, most Chinese know western numbers they are even used on many Chinese signs, strange part is, if your living in China you should know that .

so maybe they just can’t read your writing?

是的，他们的数字和我们的不一样，但你说他们看不懂，我就不太理解了，大多数中国人都认识西方数字，中国很多标志牌上也会使用西方数字。我觉得很奇怪，如果你真的生活在中国，应该要知道这一点的。

也许他们只是看不懂你的字迹？

Richard Wang

I simply listed these 10 letters using the fonts in Word.

我打开Word，用不同字体列出了这10个数字。

And this is the handwriting of a Chinese first grade elementary school student that I casually found online. Please remember, this is the standard handwriting for those who have experienced Chinese elementary education.

Actually, this is mainly a matter of language writing habits in various countries. Due to the use of Chinese characters, there are no separate characters such as uppercase I or lowercase l, so the 1 written by Chinese people does not have the small inflection at the begng, but rather resembles lowercase l (without tail).

这是我在网上偶然发现的一个中国一年级小学生的笔迹。这是接受过中国基础教育的人的标准写法。

实际上，这主要是各国书写习惯的问题。由于中国使用汉字，不存在大写I或小写l等独立字母，所以中国人写的1没有顶上的小弯折，更像小写字母l(不带小尾巴)。

Similarly, due to the absence of letters such as Z and z, many Chinese people do not have a curved top when writing 2.

The 3 written by Chinese people may cause confusion for languages like Russian with letters like 3.

The biggest difference in the way Chinese people write the number 4 is that the top is not in contact, but separated.

同样，因为汉字没有大写Z和小写z等字母，许多中国人在写2时，顶上也没有小弯折。

中国人写的“3”可能会和俄语等语言中酷似“3”的字母混淆起来。

中国人写数字4的最大区别在于上半部分的笔划并不相连，是分开的。

Due to the absence of characters such as S in the Chinese language, many Chinese people write 5 that may make foreigners think it is S.

For the letter 6, the Chinese writing style generally does not have a curved or curved upper end.

For the letter 7, Chinese people do not add an additional turn in the upper left corner, nor do they add an iconic horizontal line in the middle.

As for the letter 8, you will find that many Chinese people write it with an opening in the upper right corner.

因为汉语中没有S这样的字符，许多中国人写5，可能会让外国人错认成S。

对于字母6，中国人的书写风格一般没有倒弧或弯曲的上部分。

对于字母7，中国人不会在左上角加一个小弯折，也不会在竖线中间增加一条小横线。

对于字母8，很多中国人习惯在右上角留一个缺口。

The situation is the same for letters 9 and 6, and Chinese people generally do not write the bottom as a curved or curved bottom end.

For the letter 0, since the letter O does not exst in Chinese characters, Chinese people will draw a circle or an ellipse casually, but there will be no marking line or point in the middle.

When I first left China, I was also confused by the handwriting of foreigners, but I quickly adapted.

字母9和字母6也一样，中国人一般不会把底部写成弧形或弯底。

对于字母0，由于汉字中不存在字母O，所以中国人会随便画一个圆或椭圆，但不会在中间做标记或加个点。

我第一次出国时也对外国人的书写感到困惑，但我很快就适应了。

Jimmy Wang

No. Do you have poor penmanship? We all know European write their ones and 7 with a stroke in the middle. Show us how you write them so I can tell you what your problems may lie. As a former Postal Worker, we are well trained to read your handwriting if it is deemed too poor for our automated equipments.

不。是你的书法太烂了吧？我们都知道欧洲人写“1”和“7”时，中间要划一笔。你跟我们说说你是怎么写的，这样我就知道你的问题出在哪里了。作为一名前邮政工作人员，我们受过良好的字迹辨认训练，但如果您写得太糟糕，自动化设备无法识别，我们可以人工辨认您的笔迹。

Harry Wong

chinese have two ways of writing numbers, eg 五 n 伍. the arabic numbers r the most commonly used symbols for writing numbers. ur writing may not legible.

中国人有两种数字书写方法，例如：五和伍。阿拉伯数字是最常用的数字书写符号。我觉得可能你的书法让人看不懂吧。

Nathaniel

I doubt you actually live in China since a single trip to the market would show you a bunch of vendors with calculators if they don't have computers that show the price.

For most things related to money the Arabic numbers are used.

For things like episode number or a list often Chinese numbers will be used.

There is already an answer with the numbers are it takes 30 seconds to do a google search or use any translation software. I don't see the point in providing them again.

我不太相信你真的住在中国，因为只要去市场走一趟，你就会看到一群拿着计算器的小贩（如果没有可以显示价格的电脑）。

大多数与钱相关的事情都是用阿拉伯数字的。

比如剧集编号或列表之类，通常都会使用中文数字。

已经有人给出过回答，用谷歌搜索或用翻译软件处理一下都只需要30秒钟的时间。我觉得没有必要再重新回答一次了。

Vagrant of the South

Hi Amx, please see charts below.

你好，Amx，请看下面的图表。

They also have number gestures.

中国人还有一套可以表示数字的手势呢。

Freddie Chen

Mainly in daily life, we use the same Arabic numbers. I do not think anyone cannot understand what you write unless you write in strange way.

Of course, we have Chinese words stands for numbers which from my knowledge is still in use in bank system or some stree stalls or official business mails(traditional Chinese).

Arabic - simplified version - traditional version

在日常生活中，我们多数情况下也使用阿拉伯数字。我认为没有人会看不懂你写的东西，除非你写得太奇怪了。

当然，我们也有专门的汉字来代表数字，据我所知，银行系统或公文信函(繁体中文)中的数字仍是用汉字来表示的。

阿拉伯语-简体中文-繁体中文

1 - 一 - 壹

2 - 二 - 贰

3- 三 - 叁

4 - 四 - 肆

5 - 五 - 伍

6 - 六 - 陆

7 - 七 - 柒

8 - 八 - 捌

9 - 九 - 玖

0 - 零 - 零

Tsing Hsiung Ye

Chinese uses Arabic numbers,

but you should provide your writing to us, so that we can check where’s the problem.

中国人也使用阿拉伯数字的

但是你应该发一下你写的内容，我们才能知道问题出在哪里。

Ed Wong

You probably have lousy handwriting. Maybe even fuzzy thinking and body language.

How do you expect people to give you an honest answer (speculate) by posting a question like that.

可能是因为你的书法实在太糟糕了吧，甚至可能是模糊思维和肢体语言。

你怎么能指望人们通过发布这样的问题给你一个诚实的答案(推测)。

Anonymous

The vast majority of cultures in the world use base 10 systems -- as we have 10 fingers, it makes sense. The Chinese have been using decimal systems since the oracle bone scripts of the Shang dynasty, which later evolved into the characters used today in Chinese (Note: I've shortened the story a lot here, and I'm not an expert on the history):

世界上绝大多数文化都使用10进制—因为我们都有10个手指，容易理解。中国人从商朝甲骨文出现时就开始使用十进制了，后来慢慢演变成今天使用的汉字(注意：我略过了很多细节，我不是历史学家)：

1 一

2 二

3 三

4 四

5 五

6 六

7 七

8 八

9 九

10 十

100 百

1000 千

Earlier on, the Chinese didn't have a specific symbol for zero, it eventually became represented by 零 (nowadays often written 〇).

In modern (20th/21st century) Chinese texts, it's common to use Hindu-Arabic numerals in the middle of texts to represent numbers. Writing them in Chinese characters has a similar connotation to writing out "twenty-five" in English vs. using "25". For example 二十五個蘋果 or 25個蘋果 are both acceptable ways to write "twenty-five apples" today.

早些时候，中国人没有特定的符号来表示零，后来就用“零”来表示(现在经常写成“〇”)。

在现代(20 /21世纪)的汉字文本中，通常会使用印度-阿拉伯数字来表示数字。用中文书写印度-阿拉伯数字和用英文写“twenty-five”的意义一样，都表示“25”。例如，“二十五個蘋果”和“25个苹果”都被人们接受认可。

There also exst another set of even more formal numerals in Chinese (大寫), used mainly on cheques and other financial contexts to prevent easy modification (a malicious person could use a pen to add strokes to convert 十 --> 千, 三 --> 五, 一 --> 三, etc.).

中文中还有另一组更正式的数字(大寫数字)，主要用于支票和其他金融语境中，防止被人篡改(居心不良的人可能会用笔在中文文字上添加笔画进行篡改，比如十改成千, 三改成五，一 改成三等)。

0 零

1 壹

2 貳

3 叄

4 肆

5 伍

6 陸

7 柒

8 捌

9 玖

10 拾

100 佰

1000 仟

YunChen Song

If you do a quick Google, you’ll find the Chinese characters for numbers 1 to 10 are: 一二三四五六七八九十 and the traditional ones (which are just awesomely beautiful btw) are: 壹贰叁肆伍陆柒捌玖拾.

In some circumstances, yes, we do write them in Chinese characters, such as formal documents, for special semantic reasons or checks. (actually not sure about the last one)

But if you ask someone what’s 125 x 8? No one is gonna answer you back with “一千” (one thousand). It’ll be tedious to do math that way. Anything deals directly with pure mathematics, we write Arabic numerals like everyone else does???

如果你用Google搜索一下，就会发现表示数字1-10的简体汉字是：一二三四五六七八九十，繁体汉字（繁体汉字写起来非常美）是壹贰叁肆伍陆柒捌玖拾。

在有些语境中，没错，我们会用汉字来表示数字，比如正式文件，出于特殊的语义原因或支票(实际上对于后者我不太确定)。

但是如果你问别人125 × 8等于多少？没有人会用“一千”来回答，这么计算实在很乏味。任何直接涉及纯数学的东西，我们都会像其他人一样直接用阿拉伯数字来表示。

Seth Ssu

We use them both.

But sometimes, you have to use a certain form.

For example, if you are doing some accounting documents, you will have to write Chinese characters to confirm.

And of course some official documents issued by our government, will use Chinese characters to confirm as well.

我们中国人表示数字时，会用阿拉伯数字，也会用汉字。

但有时，你必须使用特定的形式。

例如，如果你正在编制一些会计文件，你就必须用汉字来表示数字。

当然，我们政府发布的一些官方文件也会使用汉字来表示数字。

George Corley

They use both in different situations. It’s basically the same as how English speakers will often use Arabic numerals but we will also write out the numbers in words when necessary.

Other posters have brought up the financial numbers, which are useful for banking, just like how a paper check in the US uses both a numerical value and the same number written out in English.

他们会根据不同的情况使用这两种方法。这就和英语国家也经常使用阿拉伯数字一样，但我们在必要时也会用英文来表示数字。

其他用户提到了金融数字，这对银行业务很有用，就像美国的纸质支票一样，既用阿拉伯数字，也用英文书写出来。

I expect most cultures do the same thing that Anglophones and Chinese speakers do, here, since the Arabic numerals really don’t represent any language’s way of expressing numbers, so you need both the linguistic representation and the ideographic numeral representation for different purposes.

我认为大多数文化都和英语使用者、汉语使用者一样，因为阿拉伯数字并不代表任何语言表达数字的方式，所以你需要语言表征和表意数字来满足不同的使用目的。