Friday the 13th

666

The 13th floor of any building (if they even label it the 13th floor)

Lucky number 7

Anything sound familiar? Regardless of your personal feelings towards these numbers, most everybody in America is well aware of their significance. Even if we don’t really believe that the number 13 is unlucky, it just doesn’t feel right working on the 13th floor, does it? If your phone number begins with 666, you’d probably get more than a few comments about it, wouldn’t you? Until recently, I had this silly idea that these lucky or unlucky numbers were the same everywhere in the world. They’re not.

The two most unlucky numbers here in China are 4 and 7. Why is that, you ask? Unlike in America (does anybody know why 13 is unlucky?), I can actually answer that question: the word for 4, or 四 sounds eerily close to the word 死, the Chinese symbol for “death”. Makes sense. Accordingly, the word for 7, or 七 has a sound similar to 欺 which means “fool”. Two lucky numbers in China are 6 and 8. People pay thousands of dollars to have a telephone number like or . If there’s any doubt as to whether the number 8 is considered to be lucky in China, just look at the Olympics. Have you noticed when the summer Olympics begin this year? August 8, 2008 or 8/8/2008. They even have the opening ceremony beginning at 8pm! People in China went crazy when this was announced. This would for sure bring good luck to the Olympic Games and to China.

Unfortunately, 2008 hasn’t turned out to be so lucky. It all began this winter with the terrible ice storm we talked about a bit after our Spring Festival vacation. Thankfully when my parents visited we stayed in the unaffected northern part of China, but everybody was still talking about it. Besides the havoc that was wreaked on the economy, which was enormous, it also highlighted the importance of the rail network here in China. Without trains running due to severe ice, no coal was transported south to keep people warm and no food was transported north to keep people fed. Total cost: over $1billion dollars. Then the earthquake. Cost estimates along with the death toll are rising daily and are just now beginning to show signs of slowing. Minute-by-minute reports of the relief and recovery effort continue to bombard us from every possible media outlet and the government has recently accepted the help offered by the UN. I will also mention the difficulties that have arisen during the Olympic torch relay this year, another subject that we have talked about a bit. It may not seem like much to you, but realize that we’re only in the 5th month of the year right now!

So is it possible to change the luckiness of a number? Believe it or not, a small change is happening in the minds of some of the youth, but for now it looks only to be a fad. Once the Olympic games are finished China will probably look back on this year fondly, remembering the lives that were lost while trying to forget all the suffering that occurred. I have posed this question to a few Chinese and they all agree that the number 8 will still retain it’s “lucky quality” after all is said and done. The ice storm and earthquake may dampen the mood here, but there’s nothing like a good old Olympic games to boost the spirits!

What I find most interesting in all of this is how we as humans search for meaning in anything we can. Whether through relationships, nature, or numbers, we sometimes expect these things to explain our purpose or our lives. But what happens when people come to find out that relationships will let you down, nature produces things like earthquakes, and numbers, as we see here, CAN lie? Hopefully people will begin to look beyond humanity in their search for meaning. We have already seen it in the eyes of many who attended the candlelight vigil last week.