How do Chinese people count to ten using only one hand

Have you ever wondered how you could count to ten using your fingers and thumbs if someone chopped off one of your hands. I didn’t consider this could be done until a started learning mandarin. Let’s find out how it is done…

When your in china and you visit a bar, you won’t be far from a cup full of dice. Five dice to be precise – given to each player. They are used to play a game of liars dice. This is where you can trick or honestly win your way to victory by guessing whether the player in turn is lying or telling the truth about the number of a certain dice number rolled by all the players in the game. No one can see what each individual player has rolled though as they are concealed by the cup. It’s a fun game, but what most fascinated me was that this game could be played in a loud bar where it was too loud to shout numbers across the table. My chinese friends were doing a strange hand gesture to represent numbers larger than five.

It turns out that you can count to ten using chinese hand signals and only use one hand in the process.

The hand signals are as follows:

1. One: hold up your hand and extend the pointer finger upward.
2. Two: hold up your hand and extend the pointer and middle fingers upward into a V-shape (like a peace sign).
3. Three: hold up your hand and extend the pointer, middle, and ring fingers upward.
4. Four: hold up your hand and extend the pointer, middle, ring and pinky fingers upward.
5. Five: Hold up your hand with all five fingers extended upward (like a stop sign) or pinch all five fingers together.
6. Six: Fold the pointer, middle, and ring fingers into a fist and extend the thumb and pinky fingers outward.
7. Seven: Make a fist and extend the thumb outward and pointer finger downward.
8. Eight: Make a first and extend the thumb upward and the pointer finger forward (like a gun).
9. Nine: Make a fist, extend the pointer finger and curve it (like making a ‘C’).
10. Ten: Make a fist or using two hands.

Once you have mastered these hand signals it will really help you gain a little expertise and assist you in your mandarin learning ability. Give them a go, we can practice them together in our mandarin lessons.