Do chinese people use imperial system for weight?

It’s not a mixup, it’s bad translation since there’s not equivalent to Jin in English. In all the novels machine translation immediately defaults Jin to kg, which is vastly incorrect. Sometimes creators do the conversions themselves for the audience, if the weight feels off to you, do the calculation real quick and you’ll know whether it’s a mistake

I dunno if they’re purposely using pounds. But for me, 1 jin is approx 1 lb in my head especially when I’m doing price conversions.

The modern mainland Chinese system uses a metric catty/pound which is exactly 500g.

I’m Chinese, I use both.

In China it’s metric. In red or people are probably just playing around.

The lbs should be jin/catties

I've only ever seen kg and cm used.

Slightly related question: I’ve noticed that lots of bottles contain a bit more or a bit less than 500ml. Is this related to some traditional measurements?

It's not uncommon in China for people to measure their weight in Gongjin(kg) or Jin which was an ancient unit of weight, but now is set to exactly 500g or 1.102lbs. Similarly you might see distances in Gongli (1km) or Li (500m) units.

It's neither kilogram or pound. It's half a kg.