User:Ran Lemeng/article1
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In Chinese tradition, certain numbers are believed by some to be auspicious (吉利) or inauspicious (不利) based on the Chinese word that the number name sounds similar to. The numbers 0, 6, 8, and 9 are believed to have auspicious meanings because their names sound similar to words that have positive meanings. Numbers always have their own distinctive meanings in different culture, like "13" is an unlucky number in many western countries, China also has a tradition that numbers are classified into "good" and "bad" categories since their pronunciations are usually similar to some certain Chinese words. This tradition has kept since hundreds of years ago, and is still very popular today. The favors and taboos about some sensitive words, such as "death", "illness", "happiness", "break" and so on, make Chinese people extremely careful when they talk about the related-pronunciation numbers: they usually use “wan”, which represents ten thousand, to describe a person who is very rich, or use “er bai wu”, which is two hundred and fifty, to complain someone who is stupid and careless because this number was seen as a half of a low-income labor’s annul wag. The most common numbers Chinese people use in their daily life are eight, six, and nine, whose pronunciations are similar to the Chinese words "fa(development)", "liu(frequent)", and "jiu(forever)". Here comes an detailed introduction of both the lucky and unlucky numbers in Chinese culture.
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