How to Write 仟 (qiān) — Meaning “thousand (complex form used in finance)”

Picture a person (亻) holding a giant '1,000' sign (千). The 亻 radical looks like a standing person, and the 千 inside is the number one thousand. Imagine this person working at a bank, writing formal checks to remember that 仟 is the fancy thousand used in finance.

Write the left radical 亻 first — it is a single vertical stroke with a short leftward hook, then a short horizontal stroke on the left. The right side 千 comes next: start with the top left-slanting stroke, then a long horizontal stroke, and finish with a vertical stroke downward. A common mistake is making the top stroke of 千 too horizontal; it should slant slightly left to match the character’s proportions.

仟 means 'thousand' in formal finance, while 亿 (yì) means 'hundred million' (also used in formal contexts). 什 (shén) means 'ten' or appears in 'what' (什么) and is unrelated to numbers. Visually, 仟 has the 亻 plus 千, 亿 has 亻 plus 乙 (a curved stroke), and 什 has 亻 plus 十 (the number ten).

仟 is used in financial documents like checks, invoices, and contracts to write the number 1,000 in a more secure, hard-to-alter form. For example, 壹仟 (yī qiān) is the formal way to write 'one thousand'. This practice prevents fraud because the simpler character 千 can be easily changed by adding extra strokes.

Common words containing 仟 include: 壹仟 (yī qiān) — One thousand (formal form); 仟佰 (qiān bǎi) — thousands and hundreds; 仟万 (qiān wàn) — ten million (complex form).