The yuan is the money of China — one yuan, ten yuan, a hundred yuan. It is the unit you count in, the way dollar is the unit in America.

One point confuses everyone, so let us be clear. The currency of China has two names in English, and they are not quite the same kind of name. Renminbi (人民幣) is the name of the money itself, the whole system. Yuan is the name of the unit you count. So you say "the price is 200 yuan", but you say "China's currency, the renminbi, rose today". Newspapers often blur this and use yuan for both; that is normal and nobody will correct you.

In English, yuan does not usually take an -s in the plural: five yuan, not five yuans. This is like the way we say five yen.

The word has a long history worth knowing, because it explains three currencies at once. 元 originally meant round — it named the round silver coins that came into Asia through trade. The Japanese yen and the Korean won come from that same character. So yen, won and yuan are cousins, all meaning "the round one".

One more thing that trips up learners from Taiwan: the everyday Chinese word 元 is also how you count New Taiwan dollars. But in English, Taiwan's money is never called yuan. It is the New Taiwan dollar, written NT$ or TWD. If you say yuan in English, your listener will think of China.