Chinese Fortune Numbers
Open a Fortune Cookie. Fortune Cookie Recipe. Fortune Cookie Quotes. Chinese Translation. Lucky Numbers (Lotto) Daily Numbers (Pick 3) Submit a Fortune Cookie. In 1973, Wonton Food Inc. Started a company with ten employees and a single production line in a facility in New York City’s Chinatown. Over forty years later, the company’s fortune cookies are enjoyed as a treat after meals in Chinese-American restaurants and take outs throughout the country. Dating back to its origins in the Far East in the 1800s, this snack has been a big part of.
Jun 20, 2021 Numbers have always played a significant role in Chinese culture. People in China traditionally associate fortune with lucky numbers. Thus, there came a system of lucky numbers on their own way. It is undeniable that numbers differ from auspicious and ominous. Open a Fortune Cookie. Fortune Cookie Recipe. Fortune Cookie Quotes. Chinese Translation. Lucky Numbers (Lotto) Daily Numbers (Pick 3) Submit a Fortune Cookie. Buy Fortune Cookies.
Although nowadays beliefs in lucky and unlucky numbers are often regarded as superstitious, millions of Chinese people, from various social and ethnic groups, still hold such beliefs. A number is an important tool in accessing Chinese culture. Knowing the implicit meanings behind numbers will not only help you explain some unique situations in Chinese society but will also lead you to the wellspring of ancient Chinese wisdom.
Chinese Lucky Numbers For 2021
Numbers in China range between auspicious and ominous mainly depending on the similarity between its pronunciation and that of another word that carries a positive or negative connotation.
For example, the most commonly used Chinese New Year lucky numbers are 6 and 8, because 6 is similar to “溜 liu” in Chinese, meaning “smooth”, so 66 means “everything goes well”; 8 is lucky as well because its pronunciation is similar to that of the word “发 fa” in “发财”, which means to make a fortune.
Number | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Chinese | 一 | 三 | 五 | 七 | 九 |
Pronunciation | èr | sì | liù | bā | |
Lucky or Not | Neutral | Neutral | Neutral | Unlucky | Lucky |
What are the Chinese Luckiest Numbers?
2 Uses in China
2, pronounced “er”, is considered lucky because “all good things come in pairs”. The theory of Chinese Feng Shui posits that the TWO features yin and yang are complementary forces of all things in the world. Among young people in China, number two has become a popular adjective to describe frank, innocent, reckless personality. They believe “er” reflects a positive attitude towards life.
- In a traditional Chinese wedding, the new couple’s house and the restaurant will be decorated with 囍 paper-cuts, symbolizing double-luck.
- “Er bai wu” is Chinese for “two hundred and fifty”. On most occasions, it is not used to praise, but to refer to someone as stupid. This is unrelated, however, to the general luckiness of the number 2.
6 Uses in China
6 is pronounced “liu” in Mandarin Chinese, and this sounds like the Mandarin Chinese word meaning “flowing, smooth, or frictionless”. Therefore, the number 6 has the meaning of “everything will go smoothly” and is considered lucky especially where it occurs in multiples. In feng shui, the number 6 represents authority and power.
- A license plate with the number 66666 can be worth millions in China.
- Young Chinese netizens widely use “666” to express admiration for people or things.
8 Uses in China
8 is considered the luckiest lucky in Chinese culture, because as mentioned above, in Mandarin Chinese, the pronunciation of “eight” is close to that of the phrase meaning “to make a fortune”. The number 8 is also uniquely symmetric, and when laid on its side, resembles the Greek symbol for infinity.
- Chinese people tend to prefer the number 8 when buying a house, license plate, or telephone number, even if it means paying extra money.
- The Chinese government complied with euphoria over the number 8 in the year of the Olympic Games, 2008: the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Beijing began on the eighth of August (08/08/08), at precisely 8 minutes and 8 seconds past 8 PM, local Beijing time!
- Bagua (八卦) literally means Eight Symbols. People now use it to refer to personal information. It can also describe someone who likes gossip.
9 Uses in China
9 is considered especially propitious. This is partly due to the fact that the pronunciation of “nine” is close to that of the word “long-lasting” in Chinese. So the couples would be glad to get wedding gifts containing the number 9, like a bouquet of 99 roses, which has an auspicious meaning of “have a long-lasting happy life together”.
In feng shui, 9 is highest on the number scale and represents the “ultimate masculinity”. It used to symbolize the supreme sovereignty of the emperor. So 9 or some multiple of 9 were often used in imperial house designs, like the 9,999 rooms in the Forbidden City.
Chinese Lucky Number Combinations
Chinese people love to use lucky number combinations to express their wishes or emotions.
- 168 (li liu ba) sounds like 一路发 (yi lu fa), meaning “making a fortune all the way”.
- 520 (wu er ling) is like 我爱你 (wo ai ni), which means “I love you”.
- 1314 (yi san yi si) represents 一生一世 (yi sheng yi shi) in Chinese, meaning “throughout one’s life, which is often combined with 520 to say 5201314, “I love you forever”.
- 666 and 888 are often the cash quantity of the Red Envelope during Chinese New Year, as a blessing from the elders to the younger generations, which hopes that they will have a smooth and successful life.
Chinese Zodiac Lucky Numbers
Chinese zodiac, known as Sheng Xiao (生肖) in China, consists of the 12 animal signs designated to the 12 earthly branches in China. The zodiac animals in order are the Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig, calculated according to Chinese Lunar New Year based on a twelve-year cycle. Each of the animal signs has its own lucky numbers.
Zodiac | Years | Lucky Numbers |
Rat | …1984, 1996, 2008, 2020… | 2, 3 |
Ox | …1973, 1985, 1997, 2009… | 1, 9 |
Tiger | …1974, 1986, 1998, 2010… | 1, 2, 3 |
Rabbit | …1975, 1987, 1999, 2011… | 3, 7 |
Dragon | …1976, 1988, 2000, 2012… | 1, 6, 7 |
Snake | …1977, 1989, 2001, 2013… | 1, 6 |
Horse | …1978, 1990, 2002, 2014… | 2, 3, 7 |
Goat | …1979, 1991, 2003, 2015… | 3, 4, 9 |
Monkey | …1980, 1992, 2004, 2016… | 4, 6 |
Rooster | …1981, 1993, 2005, 2017… | 5, 7, 8 |
Dog | …1982, 1994, 2006, 2018… | 3, 4, 9 |
Pig | …1983, 1995, 2007, 2019.… | 2, 5, 8 |
Unlucky Numbers: Avoid Them if Possible
4 in China
4 in China (and in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam) is considered terribly unlucky because it sounds like the word for “death”. It is really a bad idea to assign the number 4 to anything. Generally, door numbers and car registration numbers do not contain any 4s, especially not in the last digit-place.
Although the number 4 is replete with ominous overtones, it still crops up in various contexts in China. For example:
- Four popular plants in Chinese painting: plum blossoms, orchids, bamboo, chrysanthemum.
- Four classic novels of ancient China: A Dream of Red Mansions, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West.
- Mah-jong, one of the most popular Chinese games, needs four players.
- Four Famous Buddhist Mountains: Mt. Wutai in Shanxi, Mt. Putuo in Zhejiang, Mt. Emei in Sichuan, Mt. Jiuhua in Anhui.
7 in China
7 is a yang number and its pronunciation in Chinese is close to the pronunciation of the word meaning gone (去qu). 7 also relates to ceremonies that release dead souls from purgatory. In some parts of China, the 14th or 15th of the 7th month in the Chinese lunar calendar is the Ghost Festival, the date for holding sacrificial ceremonies.
Neutral Numbers: Safe Numbers
1- is a yang number associated with wood and with the east. It is often associated with the meanings united, beginning, independent, complete, and infinite.
3- is a yang number associated with water and with the north. In feng shui, 3 has a natural resonance in terms of beginning, middle, and end; introduction, development, and conclusion. You can see this number widely used in Chinese culture: the Three Gorges, the Three Kingdoms in Chinese history, and the three halls of the Forbidden City in Beijing.
5- has been used to classify many things in Chinese, such as the five elements in astrology, the senses, and the basic colors. It is a neutral number. In feng shui, the 5th level of life sometimes means the best.
Chinese Numerology: Number Symbolism in Chinese Culture
- 1 means only, unity, whole.
- 2 means double, harmony.
- 3 means many, stability.
- 4 means death.
- 5 means me or I.
- 6 means smooth, good luck.
- 7 means holiness, mystery.
- 8 means wealth, success.
- 9 means longevity, eternality.
What Is The Luckiest Number In China
Lucky Numbers and Beijing’s Top Attractions
The number 9 used to symbolize the supreme sovereignty of the emperor. So 9 or some multiple of 9 can be easily found in Beijing’s imperial architectural designs.
The Forbidden City, Abode of Chinese Emperors
According to legend, the Forbidden City in Beijing has 9,999 rooms (in reality, it has only 8,704, according to a study in 1973). The number 9,999 is understandable in the light of the tradition that only the gods had the right to build a palace with 10,000 rooms. Human beings tried to get as near as possible to their ideal of perfection.
The Temple of Heaven, a Place for Worshiping God
You can find the number 9 everywhere in the construction of the Temple of Heaven: in the number of steps, balustrades, circles of paving stones, nails on doors and especially in the design of the Circular Mound Altar 圜丘坛 (Yuánqiū Tán), where a single round marble plate is surrounded by a ring of nine plates, and then a ring of 18 plates.
Chinese Dragon
Chinese dragons are often associated with the number 9. For example, a Chinese dragon is generally described in terms of nine attributes and usually has 117 scales – 81 (9x9) males plus 36 (9x4) females. There are nine forms of the dragon and the dragon has nine children. There is a famous Nine-Dragon Screen in the Forbidden City.
Seventeen-Arch Bridge in Summer Palace
Numerical sensitivity led to the design of an elegant bridge in the Summer Palace. The bridge has 17 arches, the sum of 9 and 8, characterized by a gradual reduction in the size of the arches. A Chinese architect would never suggest a four-arch bridge. You can find many numerically neat bridges in southern cities like Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Guilin.
Feel free to contact us if you want to visit Beijing to really experience the interesting numerology in China’s imperial architecture.
Back to China Travel Guide
The ancient Chinese YIN-YANG scholars believed that three are two natural, complementary, and contradictory forces in our universe. The scholars named them YIN and YANG. The YIN represents the female, negative, darkness, softness, moisture, night-time, even numbers, and docile aspects of things. The YANG represents the male, positive, brightness, hardness, dryness, daytime. odd numbers and dominant aspects. YIN and YANG are continually in a state of flux and always looking for the BALANCE point. One moves, the other response. Therefore, ancient scholars treated this natural phenomenon as a natural universal law.
These scholars also believed that our universe consisted of five basic elements, which are Metal, Water, Wood, Fire, and Earth (Soil). Everything, including humans, in the universe (between Heaven and Earth) must have a relationship with these five elements. So they tried to apply the five elements not only to every physical thing in the world but also to the Colors, Directions, Seasons, and Sounds. They even applied to the Years, Months, Days, Hours, Minutes, and Seconds of the Chinese Calendar. Now, people can know their five-element weights from their birth date and time. Based on the combination of these five-element weights plus the concept of the natural phenomenon, they can tell the rise and fall of the human destiny (fate) cycle.
FIVE ELEMENTS do not only mean metal, water, wood, fire, and earth. The 'element' in Chinese also means MOVEMENT, CHANGEABLE, and DEVELOPMENT. These elements have their Yin and Yang sides too. They are moving, waning, waxing, and changing all the time. Just like Yin and Yang, the movements of the five elements are slow and stable when they are in a kind of balance. If they are out of balance, then the movements are unstable and unpredictable. When a person is in a stable (five-element) environment, he should live peacefully. When a person is in an unpredictable environment, he is easily out of control. A person will feel lucky when everything is under control. A person will feel bad luck when everything is out of control. If you want to be a lucky person, you have to live in an environment, which can balance your five elements.
Five Elements: Supporting and Fighting Relationships
In the fortune-telling system, we want to use metal, water, wood, fire, and earth as the five elements to explain everything. Metal stands for mineral, gold, jewelry, iron, rock, or something hard. Water stands for liquid or something cold. Wood stands for the tree or something to do with wood. Fire stands for Sun, fire, heat, light, or something hot. Earth stands for soil, dust, or ground. There are supporting (affinity) and fighting (enmity) relationships between the five elements.
The Supporting relationship is the Mother-and-Child relationship. One element will produce, protect and help the other.
- Water can help trees (Wood) grow.
- Wood can help Fire to burn.
- Fire can help to produce dust (Earth).
- Earth can help minerals (Metal) to form.
- Metal can hold Water.
We can say that:-
- Water is the supporting element of Wood. Wood can release the power of Water.
- Wood is the supporting element of Fire. Fire can release the power of Wood.
- Fire is the supporting element of Earth. Earth can release the power of Fire.
- Earth is the supporting element of Metal. Metal can release the power of Earth.
- Metal is the supporting element of Water. Water can release the power of Metal.
The Fighting relationship is the Master-and-Slave relationship. One will fight, repel, reject, conflict against the other.
- Water can extinguish Fire, but Fire might evaporate Water.
- Wood can break the ground (Earth), but Earth can bury Wood too.
- Fire can melt Metal, but Metal might not melt before Fire is extinguished.
- Earth can absorb Water, but Water can cover the land (Earth).
- Metal can cut Wood, but Metal might become dull before breaking Wood.
We can say that:-
- Water and Fire are enemies. Water overwhelms the movement of Fire.
- Wood and Earth are enemies. Wood overwhelms the movement of Earth.
- Fire and Metal are enemies. Fire overwhelms the movement of Metal.
- Earth and Water are enemies. Earth overwhelms the movement of Water.
- Metal and Wood are enemies. Metal overwhelms the movement of Wood.
Reading Chinese Astrology Birth Chart
Since the ancient scholars apply the Five-Element theory to the Chinese Calendar, so we can convert each birthday and time using the Chinese Fortune Calendar.
There are four columns and eight Chinese characters. Chinese call this chart Four Pillar or Eight Characters. The Year column is the information about your ancestor or early age. The Month column is the information about your parents or growing age. The Day column is the information about you (upper character) and your spouse (lower character) or adult age. The Hour column is the information about kids or late age. Because the Day column represents you, you are a black cow (water cow), not a brown tiger from the Year column.
From the Chinese Fortune Calendar, we can convert Eight Characters into Five Elements.
- The first column in the chart is the 'YOU'. 'YOU' is the element of your same type. So 'YOU' includes you and your brothers (sisters) and friends.
- The second column is the 'KIDS'. KIDS is the element that comes out of YOU. So KIDS includes your children, your expression to the outside world, or something that comes out from your mind or body.
- The third column is 'MONEY'. MONEY is made by something coming out from your brain or body. That's why MONEY hurts your body. MONEY is our enemy. Sometimes MONEY has information about our father because he brings money to our family.
- This fourth column is 'JOB'. JOB is something that gives YOU pressure or trouble. So JOB is your job, something that may make you nervous and sometimes is your children (i.e. You have the pressure to support them). That's why JOB hurts you. JOB is our enemy.
- The fifth column is 'MOM'. MOM includes your mother, babysitter, mentor, and the person supporting and protecting you. So MOM is our best friend.
To Find the Lucky Elements before Predictions
There are many ways (theories) to do this. Here are some simple ways. The basic concept is balancing the five elements.
Smallest Score
Find the smallest score for the lucky element. Metal has only 18. So Metal is the lucky element.
Foe and Friend
The foe is Money and Job, which give you pressure all the time. Mom is your friend always. If the scores from Foe are much greater than the scores from You and your friend, then 'YOU' and 'MOM' are the lucky elements. If the scores from Foe are much less than the scores from You and your friend, then Money and Job are the lucky elements. The total of Metal and Water is 18+49 = 67 and the total of Fire and Soil is 30+226 = 256. Therefore the lucky elements are Metal and Water.
Cold and Hot
Chinese Fortune Numbers
If the scores from Metal and Water are much greater than the scores from any other elements, then the combination of five elements is too cold and the lucky element is Fire. If the scores from Fire and Earth are much greater than the scores from any other elements, then the combination of five elements is too hot and the lucky element is Water.
Bottleneck
If the score of Job is much greater than the score of You, then the Mom is the lucky element to release the power of Job and gives you more strength. If the score of You is much greater than the score of Money, then the Kid the lucky element to release the energy of You and makes more money for you.
Chinese Fortune-Telling: Reading Birth Chart using the Lucky Element
If the power of Money and Job is much greater than the power of You and your Mom. You were born poor because on the date of your birth You cannot handle the power of Money. You can be richer when your lucky elements come into your life.
When you find the lucky elements in your columns of Year and Month, you were born into a good family, have a good relationship with them and your parents support you at your early age. When you find a lucky element in the column of spouse (Day), your spouse helps you in your career, business, or financial area. When you find the lucky elements in the Hour column, your children will do good in their life and/or you will have nice late years.
If the power of You and Mom is much greater than anything else, you are a person with a strong will and good health. You can be a leader because you can handle the pressure, but you might hurt people like your spouse or father easily.
If the power of You and Mom is much less than anything else, you are weak on determination and easily get sick. You should be a team player. You shouldn't do business on your own, because you cannot handle the pressure unless the lucky elements come into your life all the time.
All the concepts here are based on the affinity and enmity charts of the five elements. You can think more clearly by following the natural law of the universe. To search for your lucky elements (Years, days), go to Five-Element Menu to get it. Remember you have your lucky elements and you have your bad-omen elements too. You can find your bad years from the Five-Element Menu too. To find the related lucky stuff is from Five-Element Chart.