China follows unique system compared to western countries and the currency symbol is not an exception to that. In general, China uses Mandarin or Chinese within China and Pinyin for the outside world. With similar context, the currency symbol is a Chinese Yuan (元) within China while Japanese Yen is used as a Chinese currency symbol in western scripts. If you are looking for typing the Chinese Yuan or Yen symbols, here are the shortcuts for the same.
Chinese Currency Symbols
Below are the three names used for Chinese currency:
- Renminbi or RMB – renminbi literally means people’s currency indicated as RMB. This is the actual currency of China sharing the same Yen ¥ sign. In order to avoid confusion, some people also use CN¥ to differentiate from Japanese currency symbol Yen.
- Chinese Yuan or CNY – Yuan is a unit of RMB, however people use it interchangeably as currency with the symbol 元. CNY is also the international ISO code for currency of China.
- Kuai – this is an informal unit of RMB and kuài is what you will hear when you are inside China.
In summary, within Mainland China you will find the writings like 10元 and pronounced as ten kuai. You will never find people write 10¥ or 10 CNY or 10 RMB inside China. Below is the summary of the formal and informal currency with denominations.
| Formal | Informal | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 unit | Yuan | Kuai |
| 1/10 | Jiao | Mao |
| 1/100 | Fen | – |
1 Yuan or Kuai = 10 Jiao or Mao = 100 Fen
Keyboard Shortcuts for Yuan and Yen Symbols
Since both Yuan and Yen are currency symbols for China, you can use the following alt code keyboard shortcuts to type the symbols in your documents.
| Symbol Name | Yuan Sign 元 | Yen Sign ¥ |
| Windows Shortcut | Alt + 20803 | Alt + 165 |
| Mac Shortcut | Option + 5143 | Option + 00A5 |
| Word Shortcut | 5143 Alt + X | 00A5 Alt + X |
| HTML Entity Decimal | 元 | ¥ |
| HTML Entity Hexadecimal | 元 | ¥ |
| HTML Entity Name | ¥ | |
| CSS Value | \5143; | \00A5; |
| Decimal | 165 | 165 |
| Hexadecimal | 5143 | 00A5 |
| Unicode Point | U+5143 | U+00A5 |
| Category | CJK Unified Ideographs | Currency Symbols |
How to Type Chinese Yuan Symbol?
In Windows 10 desktop and laptop computers, first turn on the numeric key. Press alt key and type the numbers 20803 using number pad on your keyboard. This will make the Chinese Yuan symbol like 元.
In addition to Alt + 20803 shortcut, Microsoft Word also allows you to use Alt + X key combination. Type the hexadecimal code 5143 then press alt and x keys together to make Yuan sign 元.
If you are using Apple MacBook, first change the input method to Unicode Hex Input. Press option key and type 5143 to make Yuan symbol.
You can use decimal entity &# 20803; or hexadecimal entity &#x 5143; in HTML documents. On CSS, use the hexadecimal code \5143; with any pseudo elements.
HTML Code for Yuan Sign
<span>元</span>
<span>元</span>CSS Code Example
li:before {
content:\5143;
font-family:Arial;
}Chinese Currency Symbols Display
Below is how the Yuan and Yen symbols will look on the browser.
元
¥
In Windows PC, you can customize the display of the symbol by applying background and changing font size. On Mac, you can use Character Viewer app to insert Yuan and Yen symbols with different font variation.
Yuan and Yen Signs in Unicode
Note that Yuan sign is categorized under CJK Unified Ideographs block in Unicode. This block has allocated code point from 4E00 to 9FFF containing more than 20K special characters used in Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages. The symbols under this category does not have any specific name. Therefore, you can’t search for “yuan” in any Unicode chart / name list / table. Even on Mac Character Viewer, you have to search with the code value of 5143 to find the symbol.
Unlike Yuan sign, Yen is part of Unicode currency block that you can search with the name.
