The yuan is in the Chinese language the base unit of a number of modern Chinese currencies The same character is used to refer to the cognate currency units of Korea and Japan and is used to translate the currency unit dollar for example the US dollar is called Meiyuan or American yuan in Chinese When used in English in the context of the modern foreign exchange market the Yuan or Chinese yuan most commonly refers to the renminbi CNY One yuan is divided into 10 jiao or colloquially feathers mao One jiao is divided into 10 fen In Cantonese widely spoken in Hong Kong and Macau jiao and fen are called ho and sin Sin is a word borrowed into Cantonese from the English cent China traditional Chinese simplified Chinese Hanyu Pinyin Zhoønggu helpáinfo Tongyong Pinyin Jhonggu Wade Giles Mandarin Chung1kuo2 is a cultural region an ancient civilization and depending on perspective a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia China has one of the world s oldest people and continuous civilizations consisting of states and cultures dating back more than six millennia It has the world s longest continuously used written language system and is the source of many major inventions such as what the British scholar and biochemist Joseph Needham called the four great inventions of Ancient China paper the compass gunpowder and printing Historically China s cultural sphere has extended across East Asia as a whole with Chinese religion customs and writing systems being adopted to varying degrees by its neighbors Japan Korea and Vietnam The last Chinese Civil War has resulted in two political entities using the name China the People s Republic of China PRC commonly known as China which controls mainland China Hong Kong and Macau and the Republic of China ROC commonly known as Taiwan which controls the islands of Taiwan Pescadores Kinmen
