
The Chinese fascination with numbers - MiriamWeiner
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190210-why-china-is-obsessed-with-numbers
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gberger
Isn't remembering your QQ number similar to remembering your phone number? I
think the author is being overly dramatic as to how hard it is to remember it.

~~~
jccalhoun
The whole article is over dramatic. It takes until half way through to get to
the answer: numbers sound like words or the url is from their phone number.

But that would be a really short article, I guess...

~~~
Macuyiko
My initial reaction as well: "What a way to draw out something simple across
page of prose."

(1) Numbers in Chinese match well with the tonality of the language making it
easier to remember (compare: "singing" numbers in any language works better to
remember them).

(2) Chinese students are trained from a young age to memorize.

That's it basically. No "obsession". No hidden stuff. I also find articles
like this pretty degrading.

That doesn't mean I'm not jealous of my Chinese half of the family to be able
to remember numbers so easily whereas I can barely remember my PIN code :).

~~~
taobility
That reminds me every time when I have to tell some customer service on the
phone my email address, which needs to provide every character an vocabulary
to avoid typo, meanwhile, in China, I just need to provide QQ email with plain
numbers, and barely made any mistake.

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tribune
It's hinted at in the article, but it's worth noting that Mandarin Chinese
numbers are much simpler than their counterparts in most other languages. 1-10
are all monosyllabic and the system thereafter is pretty regular. Numbers are
not as much of a mouthful as they are in English and probably easier to commit
to memory.

~~~
moate
There is one polysyllabic number from 1-10 in English (7). There are 2
3-syllable numbers from 11-20 (11, 17). After that everything is 2 or 3
syllables (X7s excluded) until 100. IDK man, doesn't seem like that much of a
mouthful.

~~~
Cookingboy
By monosyllabic he meant one short syllable only, or "mora":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mora_(linguistics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mora_\(linguistics\))

Eight, for example is one syllable with two moras, the "eigh" sound and the
"t" sound at the end.

Same for Zero, which as "Ze" and "Ro" separated into two moras.

Nine, Five, Four, Three, Two, One, for example are one mora words.

Six actually has 3 mora, with "Si" at the beginning and the X at the end
having two mora "k" and "s" sound.

In comparison all Chinese characters have one mora only, thus it's much faster
and easier to use in numbers.

~~~
moate
A valid point, but that's not what he literally said. We're all being pedantic
here (nothing wrong with that, we're discussing linguistics after all).

I was just pointing out that he's literally wrong, and if that's what he meant
he should be more clear in his phrasing.

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tomxor
> the word ‘four’ in Mandarin sounds similar to the word for ‘death’

The hotel attached to the Shanghai airport doesn't have a 4th floor... or more
accurately it's labelled as the 5th floor.

The superstition is real, and more potent than western numerological
superstitions such as 13 - the fact that number sounds resemble other meanings
in Chinese seems like a valid explanation.

~~~
Permit
Many new condo buildings in Toronto are built this way as well. My building
doesn't have a 4th, 13th, 14th, 24th, 34th or 44th floor.

Part of me wonders if it's also in part so they can sell the 39th floor as the
"45th" floor.

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fouc
The article is bellyaching about not being able to memorize 10 digit numbers,
and that apparently westerners are afflicted with this curse.

I think that's just laziness. If you need to memorize a number it just takes a
few minutes of work, and then some reinforcement later.

~~~
clubm8
>I think that's just laziness. If you need to memorize a number it just takes
a few minutes of work, and then some reinforcement later.

Actually it's been well documented that human capacity in working memory is
7±2[1]. This is why phone numbers were initially 7 digits.

It certainly is possible to memorize long strings with sustained repitition,
but this is usually meaured in weeks or months even if practiced every day.

It's not "lazy" to be unable to perform at the far right of the bell curve in
terms of recall.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two)

~~~
msbarnett
You're confusing working memory with memorization capacity in general.
Memorizing a ten digit number is not significantly challenging and certainly
doesn't take "weeks or months even if practiced every day".

~~~
clubm8
>You're confusing working memory with memorization capacity in general.
Memorizing a ten digit number is not significantly challenging and certainly
doesn't take "weeks or months even if practiced every day".

It's certainly to memorize something short term (eg repeat your QQ number over
and over for a period of time) but there needs to be spaced repetition over
longer periods to make that memorization permanent.

Feel free to provide specific citations, as I did in my parent comment, if you
would like to disagree further.

~~~
msbarnett
>Feel free to provide specific citations, as I did in my parent comment, if
you would like to disagree further.

I'd encourage you to actually read the study you're attempting to "cite" by
linking to a poorly written Wikipedia summary. Here's the actual link:
[http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Miller/](http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Miller/)

If you read it, you'll find that it makes absolutely no claim about the long-
term memorization of numbers outside of the range "7 plus or minus 2" \--
instead, it's discussing what it terms "immediate memory", your ability to
perform tasks such as mapping specific tones to numbers on the fly, or repeat
a series of number you've just been told for the first time, and how your
conscious working "scratchpad memory" quickly becomes overwhelmed.

Indeed, the very paper you're "citing" disagrees with you entirely. He notes
that subjects can _very quickly_ memorize much larger numbers, but that _this
does not invalidate his claim re: working memory_ because this is simply
accomplished by chunking the number to be memorized into segments compatible
with the conscious mind's small working set.

Again: you have completely misunderstood the paper in question, and are
incorrectly conflating "working memory" and "memorization capacity", which are
very very different things.

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tsumnia
While you more than enough defend working memory and memorization capacity, I
figured I'd chime in with additional supporting documentation. Cognitive load
theory models short time memory as scarce and finite in nature. With each
"number", you have less freely available working memory to use AND maintaining
those values places their own stress.

Current theories about long term memory (or "memorization capacity") consider
it infinite in capacity.

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21
> to never flush toilet paper

Interesting note.

[https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-not-flush-down-toilet-
pa...](https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-not-flush-down-toilet-paper-in-
China)

~~~
alainchabat
I was always wondering when I see a sign saying to not flush toilet papers. Do
you need to throw it in the trash can after wiping your butt? Because I always
flush it, don't want to make the toilet room smell bad or give a hard time to
the cleaning lady/boy!

~~~
tivert
> Do you need to throw it in the trash can after wiping your butt?

Yes, and in my experience they're usually the kind with a lid.

It look me a long time to learn that you weren't supposed to flush TP in
China, since people don't put signs about it in their homes.

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viburnum
Because their writing system is a huge hassle, numbers look good.

