百
hundred
bǎi
What does 百 mean?
百 (bǎi) is the Chinese number 'one hundred,' but with one rule that always trips up English speakers: it almost never appears alone. To say 'one hundred,' you must say 一百 (yìbǎi) — the 一 is required, unlike English where 'a hundred' or just 'hundred' works fine. Multi-digit numbers follow the same building-block logic as English: 二百 / 两百 (200), 三百 (300), 一百零五 (105 — note the obligatory 零 'zero' to fill the empty tens place), 一百二十 (120). 百 also functions metaphorically to mean 'many / all kinds of' in fixed expressions: 百货 ('hundred goods' = department store merchandise), 百分之 ('per hundred' = percent), 百姓 ('the hundred surnames' = ordinary people). Tone change: 一百 is yìbǎi — 一 shifts from yī to yì (fourth tone) before bǎi (third tone). The character itself is one (一) on top of 'white' (白), but the etymology is unrelated to color.
Character breakdown
hundred; numerous
Memory hook: 百 looks like 白 ('white') with one (一) stroke on top — 'one over white' = one hundred.
Example sentences
这本书一百块钱。
Zhè běn shū yìbǎi kuài qián.
This book is a hundred yuan.
spoken
教室里有一百个学生。
Jiàoshì lǐ yǒu yìbǎi gè xuésheng.
There are a hundred students in the classroom.
neutral
他考了一百分。
Tā kǎo le yìbǎi fēn.
He scored a hundred (a perfect score).
neutral
我有几百块钱。
Wǒ yǒu jǐbǎi kuài qián.
I have a few hundred yuan.
spoken
百分之九十的人都喜欢。
Bǎi fēn zhī jiǔshí de rén dōu xǐhuan.
Ninety percent of people like it.
written
Common phrases with 百
Don't confuse 百 with
白 means 'white' (second tone). 百 means 'hundred' (third tone). 百 is just 白 with an extra horizontal stroke on top. Mixing them up is the most common HSK 2 character confusion.
千 is 'thousand,' the next order of magnitude. 一千 (1,000), 一百 (100). Easy to mix up when reading large numbers.
万 is 'ten thousand' — Chinese counts in units of 万 rather than thousands, so 100,000 is 十万 (ten 万s), not '一百千.' This is one of the trickiest math gaps for English speakers.