Historical origins of Chinese uppercase numerals

Uppercase Chinese numerals began in the Ming dynasty. After the major corruption case "Guo Huan case", Zhu Yuanzhang issued a decree requiring bookkeeping figures to be written with complex characters that sound the same as the simple ones for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, hundred and thousand (yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba, jiu, shi, bai, qian), in order to make tampering with ledgers harder. The hundred variants mo and qian were later rewritten as bai and qian, and have been used ever since.

Common capitalized numbers

Notes on uppercase RMB numerals
Amounts in Chinese words must be written in regular (kaishu) or cursive (xingshu) script using the formal numerals yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba, jiu, shi, bai, qian, wan (10,000), yi (100 million), yuan, jiao, fen, ling (zero) and zheng (whole). The simple numerals yi, er (liang), san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba, jiu, shi and the words nian, mao, ling (or 0) must not be used, and no simplified forms may be invented. Traditional forms, such as those for er, liu, yi, wan and yuan for round amounts, are also accepted.

1. When an amount in Chinese capital numerals ends at "yuan", the word "zheng" (or the variant "zheng") should be written after "yuan"; after "jiao" it may be omitted. If the capital-numeral amount includes "fen", do not write "zheng" after "fen".

A barcode can indicate much information such as the country of production, the manufacturer, the product name, the production date, the book classification number, the origin and destination of mail, the category and the date

3. The words "RMB" must be marked before an amount written in Chinese capital numerals, and the capital-numeral amount must be written directly after "RMB" with no gap. If "RMB" is not preprinted before the capital-numeral amount, the three characters "RMB" must be added. The fixed characters "thousand, hundred, ten, ten thousand, thousand, hundred, ten, yuan, jiao and fen" must not be preprinted in the capital-amount field of bills and settlement vouchers.

IV. When the lowercase Arabic amount contains "0", the Chinese capital amount must be written following Chinese language rules, the structure of the amount and tamper-proofing requirements. Examples:
1. When an Arabic figure has a 0 in the middle, the uppercase Chinese numeral must write the character ling (zero). For example, ￥1409.50 should be written as RMB yi qian si bai ling jiu yuan wu jiao.
2. When the Arabic numerals contain several consecutive "0"s, only one "ling" (zero) is written in the middle of the amount in Chinese words. For example, ￥6007.14 must be written as renminbi liu qian ling qi yuan yi jiao si fen (6 thousand 0 7 yuan 1 jiao 4 fen).
3. When an Arabic money figure has a 0 in the ten-thousands or yuan position, or several consecutive 0s in the middle with a 0 also in the ten-thousands and yuan positions but not in the thousands or jiao positions, the uppercase Chinese amount may contain a single ling (zero) character or none at all. For example, ￥1680.32 should be written as RMB yi qian liu bai ba shi yuan ling san jiao er fen, or as RMB yi qian liu bai ba shi yuan san jiao er fen; and ￥107000.53 should be written as RMB yi shi wan qi qian yuan ling wu jiao san fen, or as RMB yi shi wan ling qi qian yuan wu jiao san fen.
4. When the jiao digit of an Arabic-figure amount is "0" but the fen digit is not "0", write the character for zero after the character for yuan in the Chinese capital-figure amount. For example, ¥16409.02 should be written as RMB One Ten-Thousand Six Thousand Four Hundred Zero Nine Yuan Zero Two Fen, and ¥325.04 as RMB Three Hundred Twenty-Five Yuan Zero Four Fen.

Number origin
The earliest counting tools humans used were fingers and toes, but they can only represent numbers up to 20. When the numbers grew large, most early people counted with small stones. Gradually people also invented counting by tying knots in ropes, or by making marks on animal hides, trees and stones. In ancient China, counting was done with small sticks made of wood, bamboo or bone, called suanchou. These counting methods and symbols slowly turned into the earliest numeric symbols (digits). Today, countries around the world use Arabic numerals as the standard numbers.