Muddling Measurements

Posted in Chinese on April 21st, 2007 by mei| | .

kitchen_scale2.jpgGrr. I hate having to do conversions. Yards. Meters. Miles. Fareiheit. Celcius. Milliliters. Ounces. Blah. The ISO should set up an ad hoc committee to standardize the measurements used in all published recipes.

Fat chance.

I’ve started getting the hang of converting US customary units to metric and back but now what? The Taiwanese system? I was out checking the prices of pinenuts this morning at a local sundry store and when Mr. Proprietor told me that they were x-nt dollars per jin (斤) I froze. I had no idea if they were cheaper than those at City Super. So off Mei went wikipedia-ing…

And this is what she found. One jin (斤) is equal to 600g. Moreover for the politically and/or mathematically sensitive, that’s the Taiwanese jin. In Mainland China 1 jin (斤) equals to 500g. Check out the wikis here and here. Now that’s trivia for you. I hope it’ll turn up on a Brass Monkey Quiz Game night one of these days.

So, let’s recap. Six hundred grams = 1 jin. Yes. Just don’t you dare ask me how much that is in ounces.

2 Responses to ' Muddling Measurements '

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  1. hungryintaipei said,

    on April 23rd, 2007 at 11:58 am

    yeah! i dislike doing conversions too.. i end up baking less because of it.

  2. mei said,

    on April 24th, 2007 at 7:49 pm

    how about i do the conversions… and you save me a slice :>

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