Useful Things Help To Understand How Chinese Thinking（1）
Superstitious -- me?
Most Chinese are superstitious and even well educated, apparently totally westernised people may cling to traditional beliefs. Most, perhaps all, important decisions may be deferred until what is seen as the optimal time. This might be quietly determined by fortune tellers or by the individual referring to traditional books that are readily available in China. Unexplained delays in negotiations may be due to such factors, as well as to the better-known bureaucratic ones.
Many superstitions exist, and they vary in different parts of China, so that it is not easy to know what a particular person will believe in. Homonyms abound in the Chinese language, which is essentially monosyllabic, so that one sound may stand for many different things and even a simple beginner’s Chinese-English dictionary will have perhaps fifty different meanings for the word "li". The large number of homonyms means that some words are regarded as lucky or unlucky simply because they happen to sound like a completely different word that possesses a good or bad meaning. Some people, for example, believe it is good to see a deer as it has a homonym which means "prosperous". With local variations in pronunciation and several different, if related, languages in China, there can be a huge number of words that have lucky or unlucky connotations to someone somewhere.
Some superstitious beliefs are geared to the old lunar calendar. The seventh lunar month is one that is particularly concerned with the dead. The Hungry Ghost Festival involves being kind to those spirits who lack descendants to make offerings to them, or who died a violent death. These ghosts are ill-natured and some people choose to leave out food, as well as to burn joss sticks and paper money, to propitiate them. It is regarded as a bad month for celebrations, so that weddings and birthday parties are best avoided. It might not be the most opportune time for you to conclude negotiations for a business deal and then hold the necessary celebration dinner. During this festival, trips to the countryside are best avoided, as many spirits are thought to lurk there.
The number superstitions
Numbers have a special significance to Chinese. Most Cantonese believe that numbers 4, 44, 444 and so on are very bad, as they are a homonym for death; they would not buy a motor car with such a licence plate or stay in a hotel room with such a number. Eight is however seen as good and the more eights the better. A good recent example is provided by Yaohan, a Japanese department store that opened in Beijing in 1992. More or less as a joke, the person in charge of the pens labelled a rather splendid 14-carat gold pen for sale at 88,888 yuan (approximately $11,000). The lucky numbers worked – he not only got that amount, but it was the first pen sold!
In traditional China, the odd numbers were traditionally seen as masculine and the even ones as feminine, which meant in a society with a strong preference for boys, odd numbers were generally preferred. Three is a good lucky number as is five, which is probably connected with an old belief in five elements, five grains and five tastes as well as the old Imperial ranking system of officials. Seven is also often seen as a lucky number, as are multiples of it such as 14, 21, or 35. Nine was an extremely lucky number, and 81, the square of nine particularly so; on your travels you might notice that almost all ancient gates in China have eighty-one stud heads on them. At weddings in some parts of China, as part of social custom the groom was forced to pay sums of money to the bridesmaids in order to get to see his bride. He handed it over in multiples of nine.
