Historical Chinese Measure Converter
Convert the jin, liang, sheng and dou of six historical periods into modern grams and millilitres, and read old recipes with the right scale.
The same word changed weight over two thousand years. A Han jin was about 250 grams; a Tang jin about 661; a Ming or Qing jin about 597; the modern market jin is 500. Reading an old recipe without the period is guesswork. This converter fixes the period first, then the number.
Historical unit to modern
Choose the period, enter the amount and the unit used in the source.
Modern grams back to historical
Useful when you want to cook a modern portion but write it in the old system.
One unit, six periods
| Period | 1 jin | 1 liang | 1 sheng | Note |
|---|
Vague measures in old recipes
| Term | Approximate modern value | Used for |
|---|
How to read these numbers
All figures are the commonly cited approximations, not laboratory standards. Excavated measures vary by region and by century, so treat a difference under ten percent as noise.
The sixteen-liang jin is the historical norm: 1 jin = 16 liang, 1 liang = 10 qian. The ten-liang jin only became standard in 1959, which is why a Republican-era cookbook and a 1980s one disagree.