The Luckiest Day of the Century?

I've been getting a lot of chain emails from you guys. Each email promises that all kinds of good things will happen to me if I'd just forward the email to my friends. It's all just superstition, of course, but most of us forward the emails anyway, just in case. Besides, the emails promise dire consequences if we don't. Well, just so you know, I never forward these emails, and I'm still here...

Anyway, this got me to thinking about luck and superstition. You see, as a Chinese American kid, I learned that many Chinese are great believers in numbers, symbols and colors as bearers or indicators of luck or fortune.

For example, many Chinese businesses have red or gold colors as part of its decor. That's because red represents longevity and gold represents prosperity. Many Chinese business names contain the words "Golden", "Lucky" or "Dragon" in them for superstitious reasons.

Then, there are numbers. The number 4 is considered very bad luck. That's because the pronunciation of the number (roughly "say" in Cantonese) is the same as the word for death. A few years ago I was all set to buy a house until my parents talked me out of it, insisting that it was a bad luck house. The reason? Its address was 44 Morningside Dr.

The number 8, on the other hand, is considered very lucky. That's because its pronunciation is the same as that for the Chinese word for fortune or prosperity.

Chinese believe in this so strongly that, in China, the phone number 8888-8888 sold for $270,723. Each year, many weddings take place on August 8th.


This year, the Olympics are taking place in Beijing, China. They will officially begin this Friday on what Chinese believe to be the luckiest day of this century, 8/8/08, at 8 p.m.