china dispatch #20 - luck
Within a few days of arriving in Beijing, Catherine and I got phones. We knew we wouldn't be here for long, so we just got cheapies. Good decision. The cheapies have an engraving of Mickey Mouse on the back: bad decision. But hey, he's big here this year, because it's the Year of the Rat, which, judging by popular depictions, is actually a mouse.
We got to choose our telephone numbers from a handwritten list. The odd thing is that the price was different for different numbers, and we knew why. We chose the two cheapest, mine ending in 04 and hers ending in 14. Both numbers are avoided.
The Chinese word for "four" sounds like the word for "death." And "one four" sounds like "want death." So there you have it. Death is an important thing around here.
For instance. Foreigners accustomed to the Western knife-fork-spoon setup have trouble with chopsticks, but often have no idea that they're doing something taboo when they lay the chopsticks down. When you put your fork down on your plate, you probably place it with the tines roughly facing the center of the plate, and the shaft of the fork sticking out over the edge of the plate. Same with, say, a spoon in a bowl of soup. So it makes perfect sense to do something like that with chopsticks. You put them down to pour your tea, and you put them with the tips facing down into the rice bowl, with the ends sticking up in the air, along the side of the bowl.
Unfortunately, when you do that, you have placed them in a position that is used for incense for the dead. So, don't. Instead, lay them down flat across the rim, like you would a knife.
A club I play in is on Floor F of a five-floor building. The elevator buttons say: 1, 2, 3, F, and 5. Yep, there's no fourth floor. It's Floor F.
A friend of ours lives on floor 12B. The building is in the diplomatic district, where there are tons of Westerners. So it doesn't have a thirteenth floor either. In America it would just go from 12 to 14 (giving you the advantage of having a higher-seeming building). But here, you have 12, 12A, 12B, and 15.
We got to choose our telephone numbers from a handwritten list. The odd thing is that the price was different for different numbers, and we knew why. We chose the two cheapest, mine ending in 04 and hers ending in 14. Both numbers are avoided.
The Chinese word for "four" sounds like the word for "death." And "one four" sounds like "want death." So there you have it. Death is an important thing around here.
For instance. Foreigners accustomed to the Western knife-fork-spoon setup have trouble with chopsticks, but often have no idea that they're doing something taboo when they lay the chopsticks down. When you put your fork down on your plate, you probably place it with the tines roughly facing the center of the plate, and the shaft of the fork sticking out over the edge of the plate. Same with, say, a spoon in a bowl of soup. So it makes perfect sense to do something like that with chopsticks. You put them down to pour your tea, and you put them with the tips facing down into the rice bowl, with the ends sticking up in the air, along the side of the bowl.
Unfortunately, when you do that, you have placed them in a position that is used for incense for the dead. So, don't. Instead, lay them down flat across the rim, like you would a knife.
A club I play in is on Floor F of a five-floor building. The elevator buttons say: 1, 2, 3, F, and 5. Yep, there's no fourth floor. It's Floor F.
A friend of ours lives on floor 12B. The building is in the diplomatic district, where there are tons of Westerners. So it doesn't have a thirteenth floor either. In America it would just go from 12 to 14 (giving you the advantage of having a higher-seeming building). But here, you have 12, 12A, 12B, and 15.
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