Imperial units commonly used units for length are (li), (tseung/cheung), (tsek/chek), (tsun/chun), (fen/fan) in descending scale order. These units are now rarely used in daily life, the imperial and metric systems being preferred. The imperial equivalents are written with the same basic Chinese characters as the Chinese system. In order to distinguish between the units of the two systems, the units can be prefixed with "Ying" () for the Imperial system and "Wa" () for the Chinese system. In writing, derived characters are often used, with an additional (mouth) radical to the left of the original Chinese character, for writing imperial units.
Imperial Twilight system of bureaucracy that dominated the Qing dynasty during the lead-up to the Opium Wars. Platt concluded in "Imperial Twilight" that the Chinese, though knowledgeable and well-organized, were incapable of understanding the threat that Westernized British Empire's economic system and military posed to Imperial China; he also dedicated later chapters of the book to examining how the defeat of the Qing dynasty's forces in the First Opium War set the empire on the path to dissolution at the start of the 20th century. Several reviews of "Imperial Twilight" noted that the book's release in early 2018 was relevant given the