Eight to the Chineses is an extremely luck numbers. The more times it is repeated, the more lucky it is. Hence during Chinese New Year, lucky draws usually have cash prizes like $8,888 or $88,888
The reason for this because in some dialect “8” sounds like “fa”, or prosperity.
During Chinese New Years, you could usually find the character for Fortune (fu) being hang upside down. The belief is that fortune (or prosperity) will fall into your lap.
Ever notice how the wife of a countess is an earl? Or how we prefer the words rooster and donkey?
Another chopstick superstition I’ve read about is that in Japan, not only shouldn’t you stick your chopsticks up in your food (an idea which in America extends to forks, I’m told), you shouldn’t set them down crossed. I don’t know if I’ve heard this anywhere but in the book I read it in, though.
I was quite surprised when I went to Panda Express for some heavily Americanized, pseudo-Chinese fast food and it was served to me with a fork stuck straight up in it.
The HUSBAND. The husband of a countess is an earl.
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Thank you for clearing that up LostCause.
My family burns paper money for our ancestors once a year, and I’ve never really thought of its side effects to be very bad. I see it as no worse than firing up the grill to feed a huge family gathering of dozens of people.
Of course I should have realized the situation would be different elsewhere, such as in Signapore. I’m sorry about my attitude.
[slight hijack] My grandmother burns the paper dealies every year. She folds them into shapes that look like gold bars and clothing and the sorts. Every year, we rag on her about burning money. [/slight highjack] :dubious:
Some more Japanese ones, courtesy of my MIL (gotta love’em, right, China Guy?).
(OK, so some of them may have been a bit off-track from the OP, but I needed to get them off my chest. Please tell me that my MIL is nuts).
On the contrary, I think I would get along just fine with her.
Actually, there are alternate words for four and seven. The numbers ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi, kyu, ju are of Chinese origin and there is an alternate, native way of counting that goes: hito, futa, mi, yon, itsu, mu, nana, ya, koko, to.
So, people usually replace “shi” and “shichi” with “yon” and “nana”. Nine isn’t replaced because it’s usually pronounced “kyu” and not “ku”.
The interesting question is why is seven replaced. Even though seven is supposed to be a lucky number, I’ve heard that it was unlucky because “shichi” = pawn and “shichi” = death place.
One more. My dad once admonished me for picking up the teapot with my palm facing up. When I asked him why not, he said, “I dunno…obachan always said not to…”
This is true. My girlfriend is Chinese and told me once that people will go to elaborate lengths in China to try and finagle a license plate that has as many 8s as possible in it. If you see one with more than two or three 8 digits, you can rest assured that the person driving is either rich or a government official with clout (or more probably, both).
4, on the other hand, is best avoided in your license plate if at all possible, because as other posters have mentioned, it has connotations with death/bad luck - it’s similar to the way your average Christian might not be thrilled about having a plate ending in 666. I once saw a taxi unlucky enough to have four 4s in its plate number, and my girlfriend remarked (in all seriousness) that he probably gets very few customers.
One one the things I found interesting when I was in China, and though was a good example of just how superstitious Chinese can be, was that in many hotels the “presidential suite” was priced at 8888 RMB.
The sheer number of food myths aways surprised me in China. Apparently tomato is good for your skin. So is cucumber. So is, as far as I could tell, pretty much everything you could possibly eat.
This specific post-cremation rite, in fact:
I know my Japanese mother scolded me about it when I was a kid. So that’s a data point.