Nine by Nine

Monday, May 5, 2008
Beijing

As long as we’re talking about repeated patterns, let’s look at the number nine again. Throughout the city, each significant “gate” consists of huge red double doors that swing open to the next courtyard. And each of those doors have eighty-one brass “nails” (the size of grapefruits in the Forbidden City), lined up nine across by nine down.

Numbers are a big deal in China, especially:

2 - Double symbols frequently appear in the Chinese culture—double happiness, double coins, double elephants. The phrase “Good things come in pairs” originated in China.

6 - When pronounced in Mandarin, sounds much like the words for “flowing” or “slippery.” Think: Everything goes smoothly. Even though western Christian cultures consider 666 a sign of the devil, it’s just the opposite in China. They see it as triple-loaded luck. According to news reports, a license plate sporting “AW6666” sold for a whopping $34,000 US to a motorcycle dealer in the Guangzhou provence. (Makes that vanity plate of yours look paltry now, huh?)

7 - Symbolizes togetherness. Also symbolizes the ultimate tragic separation between lovers, according to the tale of the Cowherder and the Weaver Girl, whose Romeo and Juliet-like tale ends in their spirits only being able to reunite on the seventh day of the seventh month (The Night of Sevens)...every 1,000 years. For that reason, seven is also considered sad, tragedy ridden, unlucky, and supernatural.

8 - In China, eight sounds similar to “prosper,” “wealth,” and “fortune,” depending on the dialect. Throw in the natural symmetry of the digit, then write two side by side, and you get “shuang xi,” or “double joy.” The phone number 8888-8888 sold for $ 270,723 US in the Chengdu provence. The Olympic Games open on 8.8.08. A fish breeder in Singapore who deals in rare Asian Arowanas embeds the creatures with microchip tag numbers, reserving those loaded with lots of 8s and 6s for the most valuable of the bunch.

Then there’s nine. Lucky number nine. Fabulous number nine.

Oh yeah. Including antechambers, there are exactly 9,999 rooms in the Forbidden City. And that’s only because in Chinese culture, heaven alone has 10,000 rooms.

It’s the nines, baby.