亿 (yì): 100 million

Meanings

1 100 million

Characters

亿

yì

hundred million

Examples

HSK 2

中国有十四亿人口。

Zhōngguó yǒu shísì yì rénkǒu.

China has 1.4 billion people.

HSK 4

这个项目花了两亿。

Zhège xiàngmù huā le liǎng yì.

This project cost 200 million.

HSK 5

全世界有八十亿人。

Quánshìjiè yǒu bāshí yì rén.

There are 8 billion people in the world.

Tips

mistakes

Chinese counting goes: 万 (10,000) → 亿 (100,000,000). There is no single word for 'million' - it's 百万 (100 万).

usage

十亿 = 1 billion. Chinese groups numbers by 万 (10K), not by thousands like English.

Components

radical

亻 rén

person (radical form)

Left person radical - the indexing component. Inherited from traditional 億, where the original meant 'a great number of people'. The radical positions 亿 alongside other counting-and-people characters (们, 仁, 何, 你). The semantic of 'person' is preserved even though the right side has been radically simplified.

phonetic

乙 yǐ

second heavenly stem (here phonetic)

Right 乙 supplies the sound (yǐ → yì, only tone differs). The 1956 reform shrank the traditional phonetic 意 (yì, 13 strokes) down to a single stroke 乙 - a heavily reduced cursive stand-in. Pure sound placeholder with no semantic load.