Chinese Audio Lesson: How to Understand Discounts in Chinese

This lesson covers how to use discounts in Chinese and includes audio you can listen to, Chinese characters and Pinyin pronunciation.

Discounts in Chinese are stated as a percentage of the original price after discount in multiples of 10, so for example a 25% discount is written as 7.5zhé (zhé), that is, 75% of the original price.

If you ever visit a Chinese Website or take a holiday in China, you may be confused how discounting works, with signs giving a number, sometimes with a decimal point, followed by the character zhé. 99zhé for example doesn’t mean a 9% discount, nor does it mean a 90% discount, what it actually means is a 10% discount. Confused? Let’s break it down.

  • The character zhé is pronounced as “zhé” and means discount. The characters that mean “to give a discount” are actually zhé (dǎzhé)
  • The number that is placed in front of the zhé character is a percentage in multiples of 10, thus 99zhé is referring to 90%, 88zhé means 80% and 66zhé means 60%

Great you say, so surely 99zhé means there is a 90% discount? Unfortunately not. The percentage given actually refer to the price after discount, thus a 10% discount means the item on sale is 90% of the original price. The table below illustrates how this conversion works:

Chinese discount Pinyin Pronunciation Percentage Discount Percentage of the original price
99zhé jiǔ zhé 10% discount 90%
88zhé bā zhé 20% discount 80%
77zhé qī zhé 30% discount 70%
66zhé liù zhé 40% discount 60%
55zhé wǔ zhé 50% discount 50%
44zhé sì zhé 60% discount 40%
33zhé sān zhé 70% discount 30%
22zhé èr zhé 80% discount 20%
11zhé yī zhé 90% discount 10%

Why are discounts listed with decimal points in Chinese?

For discounts with decimal point, simply ignore the decimal point and read it as the items price as a percentage of it’s original price. e.g. 77..55zhé means the item is 75% of the original price and thus a 25% discount.

A discount which shows a decimal point works exactly the same as one with a decimal point; first you should multiply the number by ten, thus 7.5 becomes 75 and 8.5 becomes 85. This means the item on sale is the stated percentage of the original price. Continuing with the same example 77..55zhé means the item is 75% or it’s original price, which is a 25% discount.

The table below shows example discounted prices with decimal points:

Chinese discount Pinyin Pronunciation Percentage Discount Percentage of the original price
99..55zhé jiǔ diǎn wǔ zhé 5% discount 95%
88..55zhé bā diǎn wǔ zhé 15% discount 80%
77..55zhé qī diǎn wǔ zhé 25% discount 70%
66..55zhé liù diǎn wǔ zhé 35% discount 60%
55..55zhé wǔ diǎn wǔ zhé 45% discount 50%
44..55zhé sì diǎn wǔ zhé 55% discount 40%
33..55zhé sān diǎn wǔ zhé 65% discount 30%
22..55zhé èr diǎn wǔ zhé 75% discount 20%
11..55zhé yī diǎn wǔ zhé 85% discount 10%

What does 折起 mean?

If you see zhé (zhé qǐ) this means “up to”, thus 77zhé ( qī zhé qǐ) means up to 30% discount (70% of the original price).

Conclusion

Summing it up, Chinese discounts are telling you the price of the item as a percentage of it’s original pre-sale price. I hope with this knowledge in hand, you should be able to avoid confusion when looking at discounts in Chinese. Please check out my posts on how to count in Chinese as well as maths vocabulary for more help.