What's in a number? No great fortune_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

What's in a number? No great fortune

Ironically, many people who had ridiculed the idea also began to believe it later on. It has since become popular across the country. Even some government departments accepted the theory. For example, the traffic and telecommunications authorities auctioned "lucky numbers" at exotically high prices. Beijing chose eight o'clock eight minutes pm on the eighth day of the eighth month of 2008 as the opening day of the Beijing Olympic Games, though the authorities denied the assumption that the timing was made out of the eight-standing-for-luck theory.

In contrast to eight, four, pronounced as si, is thought to be unlucky because another character homophonic to it means death. This phenomenon caused many people to shun the number in their daily lives. For instance, phone numbers involving digit four have to be sold at low prices.

This is also ridiculous. There has never been statistics that cars with four in license numbers have a higher road accident rates or those with eight on the plate have lower rates. One of my home phone numbers had two fours and my personal ID number ends in 14, which sounds like "want to die," but I never came upon any serious accidents.

A real incident that happened two years ago in Chengdu, Sichuan province, contradicted the number-luck theory. A man quarreled with his wife and threatened to commit suicide by saying "wo qu si" (I'm going to die"). Later he used the phrase's homophonic figures 574 in his lottery attempt and won 8 million yuan ($1.18 million).