| A. They can only use numbers or letters instead. B. There are also superstitions (迷信) about some numbers in China. C. In western countries, some people think the number 13 brings bad luck. D. It is interesting to see how Chinese people use numbers in different ways. E. So instead, they used the hotline number—10010.com. This is easier to type and remember. F. Many couples choose to get married on May 20th for this reason. |
Do you like the number 13? In the past, a lot of tall buildings didn't have the 13th floor.
For example, the number "4" is said to be unlucky because it sounds like the Chinese word for "death". But that's just one example about numbers in China.
When I first came here, I was surprised to see that many websites had numbers in their names instead of letters. I soon found that this is actually convenient, as Chinese characters (汉字) cannot be used for website addresses.
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In pinyin, the telecom company China Unicom is called Zhongguo Liantong. If the company used their pinyin name for their website address, it would be quite long. .
In addition, the pronunciations of some numbers sound similar to other words in Chinese. This is wordplay (双关语). For example, the numbers "5-2-0" in Chinese sound similar to the pronunciation of the Chinese phrase "I love you". .
