I hope you are all having fun learning about Chinese numbers

Online Chinese teacher is very responsible. With interesting games and professional teachers, kids will have a wonderful time at Lingo Bus.

On our last two articles we talked about auspicious and inauspicious numbers. But what about the rest of the numbers between 0 and 10, do they have a special meaning? Or are we neglecting these and turning them into ‘leftover’ numbers?

Although we focused on the auspicious numbers last week, other numbers between 0 and 10 also have very positive meanings.

 Let’s look at 3 (sān). The cultrual source of "3" comes from “Tao Te Ching” . There is one sentence that is expressed as" 1 generates 2, 2 generates 3, and 3 generates the world"( 一生二，二生三，三生万物 ). Therefore, "3" generates the whole world. And also it’s associated meaning ‘生’ (shēng) the character for birth. It’s thought that there’s no moment as special as giving birth.

These numbers can sometimes be overlooked as they have both negative and positive aspects. Number 1 is a good example of this. This number represents beginning, but can also represent loneliness. We even have a singles holiday; can you guess when it is? It’s called 11-11 or double eleven, and it’s on11^th of November, look at all those one’s!

If it wasn’t already hard enough, the meaning of numbers can also change between provinces in China. Take "2" as an example, it’s association with ‘double’ and ‘love’ makes it overall an auspicious number as it’s believed ‘all good things come in pairs’. So in wedding ceremonies or special occasions characters like ‘happiness’ (喜) will be written in pairs.