While driving around town taking care of minor chores, I happened to catch part of an NPR report about an aspect of Chinese culture related to numbers and words and the power of belief.
Later, I did a bit of research and discovered the key to the way many Chinese related to numerology is through homonyms. In other words, if the word for a number is the same as a word that is auspicious (吉利) or inauspicious (不利), the number has power. Specifically, the numbers 6, 8, and 9 are considered auspicious.
For example, the word for eight (八 Pinyin: bā) sounds similar to the word which means “prosper” or “wealth” (發 – short for “發財”, Pinyin: fā). In regional dialects the words for “eight” and “fortune” are also similar, ie. in Cantonese “baat” and “faat”.
There is also a visual resemblance between two digits, “88”, and 囍, the “shuang xi” (“double joy”), a popular decorative design composed of two stylized characters 喜 (“xĭ” meaning “joy” or “happiness”).
As a result, there is great interest in obtaining telephone number with one or more eights. A Chinese man interviewed on NPR said his aunt was involved with giving out telephone numbers and people often offered to pay for numbers with eights. Here are examples of the popularity of eight.
- A telephone number with all digits being eights was sold for USD $270,723 in Chengdu, China.
- The opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics inBeijing began on 8/8/08 at 8 seconds and 8 minutes past 8 pm local time (UTC+08).
- A man in Hangzhou offered to sell his license plate reading A88888 for RMB 1.12 million (roughly USD164,000).
- The Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia each have 88 Floors.
- The Air Canada route from Shanghai to Toronto is Flight AC88.
- The KLM route from Hong Kong to Amsterdam is Flight KL888.
- The former United Airlines route from Beijing to San Francisco was Flight UA888.
- The Air Astana route from Beijing to Almaty is Flight KC888.
- One of Cathay Pacific’s flight numbers from Hong Kong to Vancouver and New York is CX888.
- Singapore Airlines reserves flight numbers beginning with the number 8 to routes in China and Korea.
- As part of grand opening promotions, a Commerce Bank branch in New York’s Chinatown raffled off safety deposit box No. 888.
- An “auspicious” numbering system was adopted by the developers of 39 Conduit Road Hong Kong, where the top floor was “88” – Chinese for double fortune.
What makes this particularly fascinating is the apparent global synchronicity involved. In Western numerology, eight also is closely linked to money, wealth, and prosperity. But without the homonym.
Of course, just as many Western people don’t take numerology seriously, some Chinese people regard these beliefs about numbers as superstitions. We’ve got two eights inn our land line, four eights in our three cell numbers, and one eight in our address. So we’ll stick with the connection between eights and prosperity.
“God or cancer…talk about dichotomies!” Absolutely. Mathematics, as with everything, follows the pattern of “As Above, So Below”, and of “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”. All planets have both positive and negative influences, and all number frequencies have positive and negative influences. How they affect us depends on circumstances in our individual lives and the paths we are treading. Another illustration of postive and negative is that Lucifer resonates to 11, and Jesus resonates to 11. And so it goes…..
Nice to know! I have an eight in my cell number and in our address. Thanks for the info.
Hey Nancy, good to see you!
the whole thing of numbers/numerology is so totally fascinating to me and i always love your posts about them! a lot of info here that i wasn’t aware of so especially enlightening – i don’t remember ever having had a lot of 8s in my personal numbers – phone, etc – mine are usually 3s 7s and 5s – anyway, very neat post – thanks a bunch!
YES, Mike!!!! Significant.
May the 8s be with you.
Just seen that 888 is the sum of eight consecutive primes (97 + 101 + 103 + 107 + 109 + 113 + 127 + 131).
I wish numerology hadn’t become a “New Age” woo-woo subject. Mathematics is the scientific foundational cornerstone of all life on this particular planet and in this particular universe. All matter and all anti-matter is measured mathematically, resonates within the frequency measured by its number, and every language has a letter-to-number or character-to-number conversion system. In its simplest forms, as an example, we have channel 12 on our local TV. The 12 of that particular channel represents the frequency along which the audio and video waves travel from their sources to reach the capacitor, which is the radio or television. These waves are of course invisible until they are transposed into the pictures and sounds that we are able to see and hear. Numerology is nothing more, and nothing less, than associating the influences of a specific frequency to its mathematical relativity. Without numbers, life on this planet would be impossible, whether those numbers are expressed in simple arithmetic or in calculus and trigonometry, etc. Food recipes require measurements, as do medications and all chemicals. In this country, we are now assigned social security numbers at the moment of birth. (Try doing ANYTHING in America without that SS number!!) I could go on and on and on and on, but shall stop here, except to say that every Holy Text in every religion on Earth has within its pages, the significance of numbers to human life. Folks who choose to consider it to be stupid are merely uninformed, and have never really put any thought to the subject. And 8, in its positive influences, IS a highly auspicious frequency. It represents economic success, money, power. It is the frequency of the word “GOD”. At it opposite negative pole, 8 is the frequency of the word “Cancer”. All the universal numbers/frequencies possess both positive and negative aspects, just as do the planets, etc., in Astrology. One must not forget, however, that with a combination of numbers, even when the combination of the numbers are all eights, such as 888, we must understand that the root of 888 becomes 24/6….or in 444, the fours become 12/3. The 8, and every other number, other number, maintains its individual integrity only when it stands alone. In any event, we cannot escape numbers or their essential roles in our lives, without which we would just be Zero. 😉
Whew!
God or cancer…talk about dichotomies!
That’s a sync for me too,because I left this comment over at “Always Record ”
https://audiocreatures.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/always-record-episode-7.html#comment-form
about the number 88 and 8 ;
On July 9, 2012 10:07 PM
” Talking about 88 –
Number 88 symbolizes fortune and good luck in Chinese culture, since the word 8 sounds similar to the word Fā
(which implies,or wealth, in Mandarin).
The number 8 is considered to be the luckiest number in Chinese culture, and prices in Chinese supermarkets often contain many 8s. The shape of the Chinese character for 8 implies that a person will have a great, wide future as the character starts narrow and gets wider toward the bottom.
The Chinese government has been auctioning auto license plates containing many 8s for tens of thousands of dollars.
The 2008 Beijing Olympics opened on 8/8/08 at 8 p.m.88 is often used to mean “bye bye” in Chinese-language chats, text messages, SMSs and IMs. 88 is pronounced in Chinese Mandarin language as “ba ba” (“bā bā” to be precise), simulating the sound of the English language “bye bye”.
88 is used as shorthand for ‘hugs and kisses’ when signing a message in Amateur (ham) Radio. It is used in spoken word (radiotelephony) morse code (radiotelegraphy) and in various digital modes.
It is considered rather more intimate than ’73’, which (roughly) means ‘best regards’, and therefore 73 is more often used.
The two may be used together. Sometimes the 88 or 73 is pluralized by appending an s, which is incorrect.These number codes are at least a century old.
* In “Kill Bill”(Carradine), the name of O-Ren Ishii’s Army, the Crazy 88
* The dead man’s hand in poker is a pair of aces and a pair of 8’s. ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_%28number%29
The funny thing is most of that info I got off Wikipedia,and I only skimmed through it not realizing about the “Deadman’s Hand” explanation down the bottom of that article.
It wasn’t until the “Touch” episode that I watched the other day about the poker hand and 1188 “a pair of aces and a pair of 8’s” that I made the effort to find out more about 1188 and “aces and eights”.
…and do a post on my blog about the deadmans hand and that “Touch” episode.
I forgot to write on the above comment.
Good post, daz!
I’ve been on that UA flight with that number. The Chinese also abhor the number 4 because the sound of it rhymes with death (if I’m not mistaken). I’ve got one 8 in my phone number, but that’s hardly anything compared to SOME people. 🙂
DJan， you’re right. I’m Chinese and I did grow up in a culture where the number 4 is considered inauspicious because of it sounding similar to the word death but, then again, death isn’t all that inauspicious in our culture either because to dream of coffins is considered as a sign that the dreamer is about to receive money or good fortune. Some Chinese from the older generations even believe that the numbers displayed on licence plates in traffic accidents are winning numbers for lottery.
By the way, coffin is 棺材, the second character sounds exactly like money ( 財 ) . You can see how how 材 and 財 look similar too. That is why the Chinese say that the coffin symbolizes money.
Fascinating, portia. Thanks for the clarification.
In my state of Queensland (Australia) our lottery is called the Golden Casket…which is a bit like a coffin…and I’m doing my darnedest to get what’s inside of it into my account .-)
https://tatts.com/goldencasket
Wow, the golden casket?? How weird (or wonderful!) is that?