Since ancient history, China used the distance unit li (里). While it was theoretically moved to some sort of standard in the Qin dynasty (The Qin was the dynast

Since ancient history, China used the distance unit li (里). While it was theoretically moved to some sort of standard in the Qin dynasty (The Qin was the dynasty ruled by the tyrant that built the great wall and the terracotta warriors, famous for the attempted and actual standardizations of weights and measures), it has effectively also, otherwise and perhaps generally been an effort-based unit in colloquial use. As recently as early this century I encountered people who still used the li in the effort-based way in Yunnan province (highly mountainous).