A Passage to China- The Customs

Numbers and Colours

Number do not only bear their literal meanings, but also play a special and important role, especially in the Chinese culture. The use of numbers can be found in almost every aspect of people’s lives. In daily life, in business, or even at funerals, different numbers, auspicious or ominous, may influence people’s choice or decision.

Many foreign visitors can’t help but exclaim that Chinese are really creative and that the numbers are so expressive if lined up in a way.

The Chinese people not only use numbers to appeal for good fortune, they also use them to chow people out. For example, “you 250 (Er Bai Wu)(how foolish you are)”, “you do things neother three nor four(your work without any order)”, and “still you dare to say that I’m 13points(how do you dare to consider me stupid)”. Although it isn’t really possible to know where those expressions came from, one thing is for sure: numbers are closely related to the daily life of the Chinese people.

Origins

In ancient times, people kept tallies by tying knots in ropes, and they only employed numbers and words later on. And from natural phenomena and life experience, people gradually came to recognize the signs of change of a particular matter. For example, there was the ancient saying that “if the moon has a halo it will be windy, and a damp plinth foretells rain”. As it was inevitable that were misfortunes in life, people began to adopt ways to attract the auspicious and expel the malicious. As time went on, people began to think more and they were able to link or associate things in their minds, thus a whole set of auspiciousness-attracting and evil-expelling habits formed.

Yi Jing or The Book of Changes is a compilation which records the experience of people in ancient times with luck and divination. In The Book of Changes, each number has some significance: on for tai-ji or “great supreme”, two for “two rituals”, three for the “three powers”, four for the “four directions”, five for the “five pathways”, six for the “six realms”, seven for the “seven rules of government”, eight mean the “eight trigrams”, nine the “nine chains”, and ten is the “ten depictions”.

We often say “three yangs (positive force) make good fortune” to describe the hope that misfortunes will be held at and good luck will follow. That saying is often used at the New Year for a new beginning. There is enormous yang and very weak yin (negative force) in the first, second, and third of the nine trigrams. So the three yangs are very positive.

Some scholars on Taoism feel that numbers have no connection with fortune, good or ill. They think that the only significance the number has is what people ascribe to them. Trying to say that a given number is either auspicious or ominous is superstition. Still , unlike the Western sensitivity to the number 13, the Chinese people have a whole philosophy built up around numbers, which is spread in real life.

The Numbers

1. “One” is the number marking the beginning and also has the meaning of independence or being alone. Some ethnologists point out that in China, some people prefer even numbers which symbolize the wish for “fortune comes in pairs”. They are more wary of one, three, five, seven, and nine. Because the character for “odd” in Chinese (dan) also means “alone”, people are not very fond of the odd numbers. Although people like even numbers, in odd numbered months, however, holidays have been stipulated to help people get by, from the Spring Festival(first day of the third month) to Dragon Boat Festival (fifth day of the fifth month), Chinese Valentine’s Day (seventh day of the seventh month), and Old People’s Day (ninth day of the ninth month).
   
   At weddings, when the Chinese people give “red envelopes” with money inside as gift, they only send even amounts. Like 1,200 or 2,600. At funerals, on the other hand, people usually give offerings with the last digit being odd in a wish to avoid ill fortune.
   
   
2. “Two” is the first even number which is often used to indicate double, meaning “happiness comes in pairs”. When people got married in ancient times, betrothal gifts would include a document recording all the details of the accompanying gifts. The writing style was rather meticulous. Thus, for example, a chicken or a duck would be written as “four wings of poultry”. Gold bracelets would be written as “gold bracelets becoming a pair”. And in no place would odd numbers be allowed.
   
   When inquiring into other people’s name the “eight character horoscope”, it would be written that “the groom (or bride) is in the beginning of the sixth month of his (her) twentieth year, having been born at such-and-such an hour …” The number of characters in Chinese text would always have to add up to an even number; if they lack one character, an “auspicious” character would be added. Because the character for “odd” also means “incomplete”, people in old Beijing would always make sure the number of steamed rolls made for the New Year was even in order to make a good beginning.
   
   
3. “There” is the number the Chinese have always been rather inclined to. Just open up a Chinese dictionary and one will find saying using “three” or multiples there of the everywhere. There are even more local saying and slang expressions composed of numbers. One reason the Chinese like “three” is that it stands for “many”. In Lao Tzu it is said that “Tao gave birth to one, one gave birth to two, two gave birth to three, and three gave birth to ten thousand things.” Form nothing to something, or something to infinity, “three” plays a critical role.
   
   
4. “Four” is the number most Chinese don’t seen to like, simply because the pronunciation of “four” is close to that of “death” in the Chinese language. If you use the number four on happy occasions such as wedding, especially in the southern part of China or in the countryside, you are likely to be criticized behind your back for failing to understand basic manners. The scholar Su Xuelin wrote that in ancient China number four and 72 were perhaps both mysterious number, and moreover that “four” was a symbol for the great earth. In Taiwan, four is not especially well looked upon. Hospitals and hotels normally have no fourth floor, and the numbers in the elevator just skip from three right to five. And in some cases the piece of an apartment on the fourth floor is usually lower. It’s probably only in places where the Chinese people live that this attitude towards numbers is necessary or understandable.
   
   
5. “Five” is the number that the Chinese assign little good or bad significance. “May the five fortunes knock on your door” is a saying often heard on festival occasions. The five fortunes are long life, wealth, health, an ethical life and a peaceful death.
   Besides this, the five elements (metal, wood, water, fire and earth) provided a framework for people at former times to classify natural phenomena. Confucianism also says that five implies the concept of “the doctrine of the mean”, the principle of neutral behavior without going to extremes. The writer on geomancy Zhen Zui points out that Confucians believe that five is very close to the path of the golden mean of “adopting the middle between two extremes”, and also promotes the thought of the “five pathways”. As a number, five has two at the front and two behind, with one in the middle. “This middle figure has two assistants on each side, and is unbiased in the middle. Thus five fits in well with the idea of the ‘mean’, which is always promoted by Confucian scholars”, he wrote.
   
   
6. “Six” is the number the Chinese like a lot. People like “one six eight”, because in terms of pun, “one six eight” means the way to success. “Where did ‘6 and 6 and everything goes smoothly’ come from?” you might ask. Lin Maoxiao, executive secretary of the Customs and Handicrafts Foundation, said that it might have something to do with playing dice. Six is the largest number on a die, so wouldn’t one win by coming up with two sixes?
   
   
7. “Seven”, according to informal statistics, is not taken by many people to be a lucky number. According to an old text, when someone first died, the mourning period should be seven days. Doing the Seven Days is the custom at funerals in Fujian Province and many other places in China. From the first Severn Days after someone passes away to the seventh Seven Days, there are appropriate rituals for each. Some people don’t like it, because the number of seven can easily to mind “Doing the Sevens”, plus the fact that the seventh month of the lunar year is a “Ghost Month”.
   
   
8. “Eight” is the number most people would like, and they would let you know that eight and “prosperity” are similar in sound. In North China, there is the saying that “if you want to succeed, doesn’t stray from eight.” Hong Kong, where most of the population is Cantonese, is perhaps the place where faith in numbers is the strongest. Hong Kong is a very crowed and competitive metropolis. Businessmen are especially obsessed with success, and so they have to include auspiciousness in consideration of any affair like opening a factory or signing a contract. If they can choose a day with the number eight in it, they believe they have a “successful” beginning.
   
   The last digits of the phone number of the Canton Hotel are 8168, a homophone for “success and yet more success”. Most of the shoe stores in the Longfu Building in Beijing use “auspicious” prices on their tags. One of the fastest movers is one whose tag is 168, which symbolizes “the smooth road to success”. And when businessmen stay in hotels, they like to stay in rooms 518, 618, or 816. One hotel in Guangdong even has a higher price on rooms with lucky numbers.
   
   
9. “Nine” is a lager number and it generally refers to great majority. “Nine” symbolizes smoothness and endurance, while “six”, as said above, is for “6 and 6 and so everything goes smoothly”. In the 1980s, lucky numbers went from Hong Kong into Guangdong Province in mainland Chins, and then this trend began to spread up to the north.
   
   Because “nine” is an extreme number, the Chinese people have the saying that it is inauspicious to run across “nine”. Especially for the aged, the 69th and 79th birthdays are celebrated as the 70th and 80th instead. Many people also believe that young man of 29 is at the decisive point in life.
   When people use lucky numbers to mean fortune, peace or benevolence, any number can be explained in such a way as to make is fit. Isn’t pleasant to the ear when you hear “everything starts with one and comes around again”, “five generation living together”, and “wealth flowing across the four seas”?
   
   Color in the Chinese Market

The Chinese people often say that they are the off-springs of Yan Emperor and Huang Emperor. Yan means fire with the red color and Huang means yellow. Therefore the basic color in China is red and yellow which are also the two colors of Chinese national flag. The color red in China means happiness and celebration, so it is the main color for weddings and celebration. In modern times, the color red also means revolution and refers to the color of blood of those who give their lives in the revolution. Yellow used to be the color of the emperor and the court. Now it mean bright, harvesting and rich because yellow is the color of sunshine, grains and gold.
Traditionally, white and black are two colors of a funeral, but in modern times, white also means pure and clean. Many Chinese people prefer food with black color, such as black rice, black beans, black chicken and so forth, simply because they believe that are good for the kidneys as the color of kidneys would be black according to the traditional theory of five elements.

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