Hover a line for its pinyin and translation; hover a word for its meaning. Tap 🔊 to hear it.
Alex is shopping and asks a shop assistant where to find things.
斤 is the unit you will actually buy food in. It is half a kilo — 500 grams — and market prices are quoted per 斤 rather than per kilo, so a price that looks cheap is cheap for half the weight you assumed. Ask 多少钱一斤 and you will sound like you have shopped here before. Money has a spoken form and a written one, and they run in parallel: 块 / 毛 / 分 out loud, 元 / 角 / 分 on the receipt. Note too that the last unit is usually dropped — 五块二 means five yuan twenty, with 毛 left unsaid, exactly as English says “five twenty”. 不好意思 is the mild apology: for a small inconvenience, a refusal, or squeezing past someone. 对不起 is heavier and implies you have actually done something wrong. A shop that is out of bread says 不好意思.
How do I read these pronunciations? See the pronunciation guide.
1. 多少钱 — asking a price
多少 asks “how much” or “how many” for any quantity, large or small. That is the difference from 几 in lesson 4: 几 expects a handful, 多少 does not care. Prices always take 多少 — nobody asks 几钱. To ask the rate, add the unit at the end: 多少钱一斤, literally “how much money one jin”.
2. 块 and 毛 — saying a price out loud
A price is read largest unit first: 三块五毛, three yuan fifty. In everyday speech the final unit is dropped once the number makes it obvious — 五块二 is understood as five yuan twenty. What you say and what is printed differ: the receipt will show 元 and 角 where your mouth says 块 and 毛.
3. 斤, 瓶, 袋 — measure words for shopping
Food brings its own measure words, and they are worth learning with the things they count: 斤 for anything sold by weight, 瓶 for bottles, 袋 for bags, 个 for countable items like eggs and tomatoes. The pattern is the same one from lesson 2 — number, measure word, noun — but here the measure word carries real information about how much you are buying.
4. 太……了 — too, and so
太 and 了 work as a pair wrapped around the adjective, and the 了 is not optional: 太贵了, never 太贵 on its own. It carries genuine feeling — complaint in 太贵了, delight in 太好了 — which is why it is the phrase you will hear most often in a market.
A. Fill in the Blank · 填空
Fill in the blank with a word from this lesson's vocabulary.
- 1.钱一斤？how much
- 2.五二一斤。yuan (spoken)
- 3.一牛奶(measure word for bottles)
- 4.贵了！too
B. Multiple Choice · 选择
Choose the best answer.
- 1.How do you ask what something costs?
- 2.Which is correct?
- 3.How much is a 斤?
- 4.The shop has no bread. What does the assistant say?
C. Rearrange the Sentence · 排序
Rearrange the words into a correct sentence, adding the punctuation shown in parentheses.
- 1.Tap tiles below…
- 2.Tap tiles below…
- 3.Tap tiles below…
- 4.Tap tiles below…
D. True or False · 判断
Based on the dialogue, mark each sentence T (true) or F (false).
- 1.The eggs are next to the milk.
- 2.The tomatoes are cheap today.
- 3.The shop has bread.
- 4.The tomatoes cost twenty yuan a jin.
E. Matching · 连线
Match each line on the left with the best response on the right.
F. Translation · 翻译
Translate items 1–2 into Chinese, and items 3–4 into English.
- 1.How much a jin?
- 2.That's too expensive!
- 3.今天西红柿很便宜。
- 4.不好意思，今天没有。
Generate a brand-new dialog on any topic, using this lesson's 21 vocab words — plus any words you add below.
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Half-kilos and phone payments
Two things in a Chinese shop will catch you out. Produce is priced by the 斤, which is 500 grams rather than a kilo, so a price tag looks like half what you expect until you notice the unit. And prices are spoken with 块 where they are written with 元: the label says 35元, the person says 三十五块. Cash has meanwhile all but disappeared. Nearly everything is paid by scanning a QR code with WeChat or Alipay, down to street stalls and market vendors, and offering a banknote can genuinely leave someone hunting for change.