4's Chinese Unlucky Symbol
I pulled into a parking space outside my office, and my car's odometer read 444.4 for the last four digits. I am not Chinese, but I figured better to be safe than sorry, so I drove one time around hte building and it became 444.5
4 in Mandarin Chinese (and Japanese) has the same sound as death, so you try to avoid phone numbers for example that are full of the number 4. 8's are considered in Chinese lucky, so you might notice ChildBook's phone number has a few 8's in it, 909-595-8885. My old home number was really cool, especially when the area code was 818. 818-810-3688, but then the area code changed to 626, and then we moved a couple of blocks which was now in the 909 area code and I did not have figured out how I could have kept the number, so goodbye really lucky Chinese Phone Number. When we lived in an apartment a long time ago, after we moved I found a local car dealer had gotten the phone number, since it had lots of 8's in it.
A great reference about Chinese beliefs and culture is:
4 in Mandarin Chinese (and Japanese) has the same sound as death, so you try to avoid phone numbers for example that are full of the number 4. 8's are considered in Chinese lucky, so you might notice ChildBook's phone number has a few 8's in it, 909-595-8885. My old home number was really cool, especially when the area code was 818. 818-810-3688, but then the area code changed to 626, and then we moved a couple of blocks which was now in the 909 area code and I did not have figured out how I could have kept the number, so goodbye really lucky Chinese Phone Number. When we lived in an apartment a long time ago, after we moved I found a local car dealer had gotten the phone number, since it had lots of 8's in it.
A great reference about Chinese beliefs and culture is:
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| Good Luck Life: The Essential Guide To Chinese American Celebrations And Culture | |||||||
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| Excellent book!
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Labels: chinese symbols
posted by Ray at
12:39 PM
3 Comments:
psst. you wrote "8's are considered in Chinese unlucky". (feel free to delete this comment.) =)
Thanks Andrea! Typo fixed.
Ray
I was at 99 Market (Chinese) on Sunday morning with my wife getting some breakfast (Fan Twan, Soybean milk, and just being me I like it cold instead of heated and without sugar) and a few other items. It was surprising they had a #4 checkout line, and since it was less people I stood in line. But for some reason it was slower than the others it seemed :-)
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