You might have heard or read that certain numbers are considered lucky in the Chinese culture, especially the number “8″, and certain other numbers are not so ‘fortunate’, particularly the number “4″.
Like many other misconceptions about China (“Guanxi” being another major one, please refer to my earlier post on the topic: Guanxi Demystified), those notions are only valid in the contemporary Chinese culture (circa 1980 to the present).
The irony is, most of these presently popular cultural norms would be considered silly and uncultured at best, if not completely vulgar and demeaning, in the eyes of those familiar with and respect traditional Chinese beliefs and values.
To some extent, it would seem as though the contrast or division between the contemporary and the traditional Chinese cultural traits would resemble that between the modern-day Egypt and its glorious past readily associated with the pharaohs and pyramids, as often depicted in literature and movies.
Let’s take the numbers ”8″ and “4″ for example: while traditionally both numbers had been rather neutral, nowadays the number “8″ is considered extremely lucky simply because it sounds like the Chinese word “发”, or “fa”, a verb meaning striking it rich, and the number “4″ inauspicious simply because it sounds like the Chinese word for “death”.
As a result, all in China today vie for phone numbers, license plates, wedding dates, street addresses, etc. with as many 8′s in them as possible.
In fact, such ”numeral favoritism” was first started by Hong Kong entrepreneurs who usually had deep southern Chinese agrarian cultural roots and who were known for their knack for turning a quick buck out of any and everything under the sun. They embraced the number “8″ (followed by “3″ which sounds like “alive” or “vigorous” in Cantonese, “9″ -> “long-lasting”, ”2″ -> “easy”, and “6″ -> “earning”) all they could and shunned the number “4″ like a plague…
As in all traditions and customs, apparently the practice made good economic sense as well –
License plates with many “8′s” in them would generate good money at auctions; Price tags would be inflated to end with an (or a combination of) 8, 88, or 888, etc. (Sounds awfully familiar to those of us who are already used to seeing $x.99 or $x99, doesn’t it?)
Real estate developers would eliminate the 4th, 13th (after all HK was a British colony until 1997), 14th, 24th…floors in highrise office or residential buildings — the incredible number and density of which have practically rendered them a collective signature landmark of HK – making an otherwise 30-story property appear to have 34 — no, strike that one out too — 35 floors, as squarely shown on the elevator panel. Hey, “35″ floors for the price of 30, isn’t that a great deal or what?!
The practice wasn’t introduced into mainland China until the 1980′s when Hong Kong manufacturing bosses and traders started bankrolling the economic boom in the Pearl River Delta region. Initially the socio-political elites and intellectuals from the mainland would sneer at this shallow, near-superstitious silliness. But by the mid- to late-1990s, unable to resist the mighty ‘money talk’, they eventually became total converts and steadfast practitioners of such “vulgarity” of yesteryear…
What irony — Hong Kong, a densely-moneyed island-peninsula of 7 million considered by many of its own residents a “Cultural Desert”, has been trailblazing, influencing and molding the development and formation of nearly all the present-day cultural elements (be it business or consumer, literature or music, movie or TV, food or fashion, arts or architecture, manufacturing or service…) of a nation that routinely flaunts its millennia of culture and tradition!
But seriously however, it shouldn’t be surprising, considering that China had been in fact cleansed virtually all of its cultural heritage during the ‘Cultural Revolution’ from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s (among countless other similar but shorter ideology-purification campaigns/persecutions).
Speaking of numbers and Chinese customs, there is another frequently occurring confusion:
While words like “ten”, “hundred” and “thousand” all have their exact counterparts in Chinese, there’s none for the Chinese word for 10,000, i.e., “万” or “wan” (pronounced ‘won’). Yet the Chinese customarily record large numerals in its multiples — conceptually very similar to, but mathematically different or in contrast to, the “thousand” (i.e., “,000″, kilo or millenary) in the Western system. So 100,000 would be 10 wan, 1 million 100 wan, and 10 million 1000 wan.
But then there is another Chinese word to represent 10,000 wan, or 1 wan wan (i.e., 100 million), which is “亿”or “yi”. Again, it is conceptually similar to, but mathematically in contrast to, the “billion” in English.
As a result, numbers involving wan or yi in Chinese commercial (and often, government official) literature are often mistranslated: 100,000 in English usually gets translated as 100 wan (1 million) in Chinese; and 1 yi (100 million) is often translated as 1 billion in English.
Here is an example from the official website of a leading Chinese social networking company which has received $70M from well-known US venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital and Intel Capital. In its company introduction, they claim 178 million (1.78 yi) registered users and 440 million (4.4 yi) average daily page views in Chinese, but 1.78 billion (note it’d be greater than the entire Chinese and US populations put together!) and 4.4 billion, respectively, in English.
An honest mistake made by an inexperienced translator? Perhaps.
But with $70M one would think they could have hired the best translation talent money could buy, or at least an editor or a proofreader?
In any case, it is certainly a “convenient” mistake – 1.78 billion and 4.4 billion certainly look a lot better than 178 million and 440 million!
Either way, such negligence could easily cost the company millions (perhaps even billions, who knows) down the road. Once the company becomes a publicly listed company – an expected outcome given all that VC money, such misleading numbers could prove to be a ‘lucky break’ for securities fraud class action lawyers…
There is perhaps a good take-home message for China-focused CEOs, HR executives and investors here: you can throw in all the money in the world, but when you don’t have the talent, you don’t have the talent.
Which leads to another observation of mine for some time now: many home-grown Chinese companies may look very established, professional and sophisticated from the outset, but once you have engaged them you’ll realize they are more like “adolescents in adults clothing”, i.e., they may look the part and try to act the part, but they are just not quite there yet. As with everything, it is going to take time…
(To be continued)
