.five.

happy new year! i hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season!

i wanted to add to my last post about the Olympic games that will take place this year. It dawned on me, while watching the Rose Parade that the Games are to start on the 8th of august, the 8th month, in 2008 at exactly 8:08:08 pm. which got me thinking about numbers, an some research i have recently completed. so i put 2 + 2 together, the first 2 comes from the research, and the other value of 2 being the date and time of the next Olympic Games.

getting started the number 8 is a very lucky number in Chinese culture. therefore the games being on the date and time they are is no coincidence at all, i'm sure when they heard they won the 2008 bid, the easiest part about it was decided the time the torch was to be lit. but i wonder what the Chinese think about the symbol of the Olympic Games, that's right those rings, which there are five of them. and i say this because five is not a lucky number in Chinese lore. 5 can represent “me”, the individual, but more commonly it translates to “not” or “nothing”, which is a negative, and thus resulting in nothing good. however if you put two negatives together then you can come out with a positive, such as saying 5-4, which then means “not” and “die”. which brings me back to the number 2, which is good, its luck comes from a saying that translates to “good things come in pairs”. so then, 2+2 is really good because 2 pairs of 2 are even better than one. which can argue the case that 2 wrongs can make a right! WAIT? anyway the total of that equation is 4, also a lucky number when you are in certain regions of the country. BUT 4 in Cantonese regions of China is synonymous with death and i don't think have to remind you, but that is kinda bad!

a couple more things about numbers that i found that are pretty interesting. while in our western culture the number 13 is considered bad luck in pretty much everything. to the Chinese, the number 14 is actually a very unlucky number. for instance in a super high rise tower in China it is common that any floor with the number 4 or 14 in it is removed from the elevator keys. so in fact a building that travels to the 50th floor in actuality has only 36 occupied floors. that is a pretty big difference in terms of measuring building height.

why might you ask, would be talking about numbers and what they mean especially in Chinese culture? well the answer is that i recently put together a presentation for a project that is in northern china. so as a team we immersed ourselves in all that is china. and i feel i have just scratched the surface, but at the surface was this amazing topic of numbers which is has been ingrained over centuries.

now that i have filled you in on the why, i think I'll ramble off a bunch of quick number meanings. ok so 666 to those of us in western culture means the mark of the beast, well to the Chinese language saying 666 sounds a lot like saying things going smoothly, not so bad, eh. 888 simply is prosperity times 3. 6 on its own pronounces like the word to drop or decline, and we all know declines especially financial ones are never a good thing. 7 is related to spiritual things, and ghosts. the 7th month of the calender is called the ghost month.

1 represents unity, which is pretty universal across the board. 6 is described as smooth flow and easy going. 8 is by far the most popular number in the Chinese culture. 8 means prosper and fortune, anything with an 8 on it will bring all things good by the way of money, happiness and wealth. 88 is double joy, and like i mentioned with the number 2 good things come in pairs. the Chinese telephone number 8888-8888 was sold to the high bidder for 270,000 U.S. dollars. that attests to the high value placed on the number 8, people are willing to shell out quite a bit of their fortune. again, the Beijing Olympic games being played on the date they are, is the premier usage of the weight the number 8 has.

now i can lay this topic to rest, for i have come full circle from the number 8 to the number 8. in case you fell asleep during the lecture 8 is good!. for those of you who want to read more on the subject, all the content from my blog post has come from wikipedia. i wanted to make sure nobody hits me for some plagiarism. alright that is all for now!