by Beth Szczepanski

Created on: July 07, 2008   Last Updated: August 02, 2008

Traditional Chinese society is rife with superstitious beliefs. Throughout most of the twentieth century, first the Nationalist government, and then the Communist government attempted to eradicate superstitious practices in China in an effort to modernize the country. These efforts have proven unsuccessful, and today people still go to fortune tellers to find a good date to get married or have a baby, still believe in lucky and unlucky numbers and still hang protective talismans in their homes and cars. These old-fashioned beliefs allow Chinese people to maintain some sense of control over their fates as the nation undergoes whirlwind social and economic upheaval.

Many Chinese superstitions are based on homophones in the Chinese language. Chinese makes use of relatively few syllable sounds in the construction of words. This results in part from the tonal nature of the language; if pitch contour contributes to the meaning of a sound, then not as many syllables are needed to communicate meaning. In Chinese, then, many unrelated concepts are expressed with the same syllable sound. Superstitious beliefs arise when those unrelated concepts are treated as if they were related.

One important homophone in Chinese superstition is the syllable "dao," which means both "to arrive" and "upside down." For this reason, one will often find the character for good fortune ("fu") hanging upside down in homes celebrating a wedding or during the Chinese New Year. The idea is that this upside down ("dao") talisman will cause good fortune to arrive ("dao") in the course of the marriage or in the coming year.

For a similar reason, the bat is considered an emblem of good fortune in China. The word for bat, "bian fu," contains the same sound as good fortune, "fu." This homophonic connection makes bats a common theme in Chinese folk art. Many homes feature cut paper pictures or other depictions of bats, intended to attract good fortune.

Not all such homophonic correlations relate to good fortune. In fact, the number four, "si," is considered highly unlucky due to its homophonic relationship to the word death, "si." For this reason, many buildings in China do not include any floor numbers ending in four, and some airlines do not include such numbers in their seating.

The luckiest Chinese number is eight, or "ba," which corresponds to the word for "to accumulate wealth," also pronounced as "ba." The perceived auspicious nature of this number led Chinese authorities to choose August 8,

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