more Chinese measurements

[mvrdrk]

Chinese measurements, reference material for
12 Kingdoms novels

I spent some time this weekend figuring some of the values out in case you find it interesting:

寸 - 1/10th of an inch
尺 - 1/3 meter
丈 - something more than 10 feet
升 - volume of measure, can't figure out what though, in modern terms it's a metric liter

斗 - a Chinese peck (how much is that?), an American peck is 1/3 cubic foot, Ency.Britannica apparently has a full definition, but I'm not paying for access
斛 - nominally 10 times a 斗 but usually 5 times, this is not a question, this is the definition!
甬 - 10 times a 斗

步 - 5.5 feet
跬 - half a 步
里 - 1/3 mile modern linear measurement

畝(亩?) - 733.5 square yards
夫 - 9 畝
井 - 9 夫

Which lead me to trying to figure out what a 盧 is. I have figured out that a 3 盧 make a 里 and that 8 家 make a 盧. But what constitutes a 家?

At which point I completely derailed by discovering the big dipper can be called the 北斗星, leading to 北嶽 which is one of the 5 sacred mountains (五嶽). What are the 5 sacred mountains? They are

east - tai4 泰
south - heng2 衡
west - hue4 华 aka 華
north - heng2 恒
center - song1 嵩

which started to look like more 12K research into Chinese detail to be admired. I've no idea why they are sacred, that's asking more than my dictionary can deliver. (But I want to know anyway ...)

Comments

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

寸 - 1/10th of an inch

You mean, 1/10th of 尺, no? ^_^

Try searching for the Chinese in xilu.com's answers archive. It's pretty good. You can also try the Chinese wikipedia