Thursday, December 29, 2011 | By: Beijing Zhu (朱蓓静)

It’s the end of the year, which means across China, companies are shifting into overdrive, working overtime, holding annual meetings and holding extravagant business meals. If you count yourself among this army of white-collar working stiffs, that probably means you have a pile of receipts that need to be filed: for the taxi you took home at 10 p.m. last Monday, for the gifts you bought for the company’s annual get-together, and many more.

So you go to the accountant and are told you must fill in a reimbursement form (报销单 bàoxiāo dān) before you can get your money back. Instantly overwhelmed by all the characters and white boxes, you briefly consider selling your fapiaos to a coworker for the fraction of the price—but don’t give in! You’ll need those renminbi for Spring Festival shopping.

Typical reimbursement forms usually include the official title of a company, name of the person applying for reimbursement (in this case, you), the reason for reimbursement and the date. All pretty easy, right? For foreigners, the trickiest part will be writing the amount in daxie (大写), otherwise known as “capitalized Chinese,” a method of writing numbers that’s so complicated even many Chinese have to consult Baidu or Google to write it correctly.

So here’s a cheat-sheet for you: zero (零), one (壹), two (贰), three (叁), four (肆), five (伍), six (陆), seven (柒), eight (捌), nine (玖), ten (拾), hundred (佰), thousand (仟), ten thousand (万) and hundred million (亿).  As when writing checks in Western countries, each part of the amount is written out, down to the dollars (人民币xxx元) and cents (角, literally “10 cents”).

Examples:

￥12,345.00 would be written as 人民币壹万贰仟叁佰肆拾伍元整 ￥345.60 is 人民币叁佰肆拾伍元陆角整 ￥567.89 is 人民币伍佰陆拾柒元捌角玖分

You add the character “整”, which means “in total” after yuan or jiao, but usually not after fen.  After filling in the form, you may need to have your supervisor sign it; next stick the receipt (发票 fāpiào) to the form and return both to the accountant before the reimbursement deadline. And you’re done!

Share this