Character library › Numbers one to ten
Numbers one to ten — free printable worksheets
Ten characters, twenty-three strokes between them. The fastest useful thing you can learn to write in Chinese.
10 characters · 2 sheets · A4 and US Letter
Why these 10
Chinese numbers are the cheapest win in the language. One, two and three are literally one, two and three lines. Ten is a cross. Once you have these ten characters you can write every number under a hundred, because Chinese builds them by saying them: 二十三 is "two ten three", twenty-three. There is no new vocabulary to learn between ten and ninety-nine.
All 10 characters
Questions people ask
By combining what is on this sheet. 十一 is eleven (ten one), 二十 is twenty (two ten), 九十九 is ninety-nine. Add 百 hundred, 千 thousand and 万 ten thousand and you can write any number you are likely to need.
Financial documents use elaborate forms — 壹 貳 參 instead of 一 二 三 — because the simple ones can be altered with a couple of extra strokes. It is anti-fraud design, about a thousand years old.