The number one is just one horizontalheng stroke. As in English, ‘one’ is used in many situations not just in counting, and is one of the most frequently occurring characters in text as in:Yidianr (a bit);Yihuir (a moment)Yixie (a little).

In spoken Chinese the alternative character幺yǎo can be used in place ofyī. This is because, particularly on the phone theyī sound can be difficult to distinguish fromqī and other characters.

An extraheng stroke added to 1 makes it 2.

In Chineseèr is used only in counting, the alternative两liǎng is used in other situations. This is like usingpair orcouple in English. Two, like all even numbers in China is considered ayin (female) number and associated with the earth. Two is a lucky number especially with regard to love andmarriage. Theyin-yang system is all about two contrasting alternatives.

Anotherheng stroke adds 1 to two to make it three.

It is one of the luckiest numbers and is often found in phrases and slogans. In characters the same element repeated three times indicates very many as in森 sēnforest made up of three木 mùtrees.Three represents the trinity ofheaven;earthandman. The three main Chinesereligions (Confucian, Daoist, Buddhist) each have 3 main teachings三教 sān jiào. Buddhism has many trinities of objects: sayings and deities whileDaoism has the trinity ofThree Pure Ones. There are three friends of winter:pine,bamboo andplum as well as three lucky fruits or abundances:peach,pomegranate (sometimeslychee) andfinger lemon. For centuries theSan zi jingThree Character Classic was the first book children used to start writing Chinese, the exercises all have 3 characters. The village elders were called the ‘Three old worthies’.

Adding another line would seem logical and the four bar representation was used in the earlyShang dynasty written form. However, this does make the number prone to misreading so a different representation was created. The original design was a square area divided into four quarters, so now the character is a box with the character for division inside it.

Four is the most unlucky of Chinese numbers because the character死sǐdie; death only differs intone to the character for 4. In her later daysDowager Empress Cixi is said to have forbade the saying of ‘si’ in her presence. Some roads have houses with no number 4 in them and some high-rise buildings have no 4th floor. It's also true that the 4th lunar month is one of the few without a festival.

China was traditionally considered to be enclosed by Four Seas (theearth was considered square with seas on all sides) and four Barbarian kingdoms. The fourseasons are associated with four creatures, four directions andflowers : vermillion bird (plum- south), whitetiger (orchid- west), azuredragon (bamboo- east) and blacktortoise (chrysanthemum- north). In ancient times the traditionalmonth was divided into 4 ten dayweeks. There are four blessings四福 sì fú: happiness, secure job, longevity and good luck. The four scholar's treasures are ink,paper,brush and ink-stone. The scholar engaged in four noble studies:music (especially the guqin),chess,painting andcalligraphy. A Maoist campaign in the 1960s attacked the4 olds➚: ‘old culture, old customs, old habits and old thinking’.

The original form of the character five was clearer, as it showed a square with a center making a total of five points. The modern form is modified to show only the bottom left triangle of the square. Five is at the center of the Luo Shumagic square. The numbers 518 and 5189 are very lucky because the sequence sounds rather like ‘I will prosper’ and ‘I will prosper forever’ in Chinese

It is considered ayang number because it is an odd number. In China there are 5 directions rather than just 4 (north, south, east, west and center). By tradition there are fiveelements and very many things are classified according to the governing element so there are five tastes, five smells, five classes of creature, five sacredmountains, fivecolors. There arefive Classic books: Book of Documents, Book of Songs (or Odes),Book of Changes, Book of Rites and theSpring and Autumn Annals. There are also five blessings: long life, wealth, health, virtue and a peaceful death. Noxious creatures are also classed as a group of five:snake,toad,gecko,centipede andscorpion.

Lucky Bats

One way to remember how to writeliu is that the character is rather like the Greek letter pi π with a dash on top, and two times pi is approximately six. Like the other even numberssì (4) andbā (8) it includes a ‘cut’ stroke that indicates it can be divided in two.

Six has fewer cultural associations than the other numbers. Six was considered the 'lucky' number of the firstQin Emperor, and everything had to be in sixes – including the size of hats of theofficials. It sounds a bit like禄 lù meaning ‘prosperity’ and流 liú meaning ‘flow’ so six of something can represent the wish for affairs to run smoothly. China was considered to have 6 great rivers. The ancient year of 360 days was split into 36 (6 x 6) ten dayweeks. There are six emotions in three pairs: love & hate; anger & joy; pain & pleasure.

The character forseven looks like an upside down ‘continental➚’ version of 7, making it easy to remember.

Theseven stars in China may refer tosun,moon and the five major planets but also to the seven main stars of theUrsa Major➚ (the Plow). Thedouble seventh (Chinese Valentine's Day) festival is held on the seventh day of the seventh month. The old period of mourning was split up into 7 periods of 7 days. There are seven essentials for life: rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, tea and firewood. The 7 day week was adopted in China in theSong dynasty, replacing the ancient ten day week.

Eight is divisible by two and then by two again and so the representation shows division into two.

Eight is the most importantyin number and occurs frequently in traditions. Earliest and most importantly there are 8 trigrams in theYi Jing (I ChingWG) for foretelling the future, the association with eight then moved to the eight symbols of theeight Daoist Immortals (fan,sword,bottle-gourd, castanets,flower-basket,bamboo cane,flute and thelotus).Buddhists have their own selection ofeight treasures (sea slug,umbrella,canopy,lotus,vase,fish,endless knot and wheel of fortune). Buddhists also have an eightfold path to enlightenment: Correct understanding, correct thought, correct speech, correct action, correct livelihood, correct effort, correct mindfulness and correct concentration. Eight is the luckiest number and you often see it associated with gambling. There are many gambling web sites with 888 as part of the name (888sports, 888casino). TheBeijing Olympics was opened on the8/8/2008 at 8PM➚. One reason for the luck may be the similarity in sound to福good fortune inCantonese. Astrological readings usebazi八字eight characters that record the exact hour, day, month and year of conception. There are considered to be eight compass directions (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W and NW).

The ‘iu’ sound is a bit confusing as it is tempting to read it as a ‘ew’ sound which is not correct. Thepictograph may represent an object straining forward as if it is trying to reach the number ten; it looks a bit like the number ten with an extra stroke on the right.

As three is ayang number the square of 3, nine, is an very potent yang number. The ancient Book of Rites identifies nine rites (initiation of a boy, marriage, audience, embassy, burial, sacrifice, hospitality, toasting and military conflict). Land was traditionally split into nine plots and China was reputed to have been divided intonine provinces. The ancient regalia of the ‘Son of Heaven’ included nine bronzetripods attributed to Yu the Great of theXia dynasty one for each ancient province. TheDouble Ninth Festival (Chongyang) takes place on the ninth day of the ninth month when it is traditional for people to walk to high ground and also flykites.

The strong yang association of nine was used heavily in Imperial design, theForbidden City was reputed to have 9,999 rooms and its large entrance doors are fitted with 9 rows of 9 columns of brass studs. There are 9dragons on the Nine Dragon Wall in the Forbidden City and theTemple of Heaven has nine concentric rings each made up of a multiple of nine slabs. Adragon is considered to be a very yang creature made up of 9 parts and covered with 81 (9x9) scales. Beijing was designed as an area divided up by a grid of 9 north-south and 9 east-west avenues.

The sound of九jiǔ is the same as久jiǔlong time; long life which makes it a lucky number.

Looks like the Roman numeral ten (X) rotated.Shi is a very common Chinese sound, and even if you include the ones with the secondpinyin tone there are still dozens of characters that sound just the same. It is a case where you may need to see the written character to be sure which one is meant. The very common character是shì (foris ; correct) differs only in tone from十shí so you have to be careful with pronunciation.

The symbol indicates completeness in height and width and is appropriate for the completion of the decimal span. TheTen Heavenly Stems (gan) formed an important part ofChinese calendars as together with theTwelve Earthly Branches it forms the traditional cycle of60 years. An old legend is that the sky was illuminated by ten suns who were brothers, the great archerHou Yi shot down nine of them so that the Earth could cool to a more tolerable temperature. There are traditionally ten symbols oflongevity often found as art motifs:pine tree,sun,crane, water,mountains,clouds,deer,turtle,elixir of immortality andbamboo.

A character for zero was not used for centuries, zero is not needed in counting or writing numbers as there is a character determining which is the unit (for example三百sān bǎi as3 Hundreds rather than '3', '0', '0'三零零sān líng líng). This is the same as in spoken English, it is only in written numeric form that a zero is needed. The characterling was introduced as the character for zero as araindrop which is round like a zero and also had the meaning oflast part.Qin Jiushao➚ of theSong dynasty is considered the first to introduce zero into Chinese mathematics, some regard the lack of a zero as an obstacle to progress in early Chinese mathematics.

bǎi, one hundred, has the same sound as白báiclear, bright with the same tone. The written form has an extraheng stroke across the top to distinguish it.

The same logical progression applies to the numbers over 100, they have the number of hundreds followed by tens and then units. So376 is三百七十六sān bǎi qī shí liù. However there is one exception to this regular pattern the numbers with no tens (101, 208, 502) have a special form using the character for zero 'ling' in the space for tens. So504 is五百零四wǔ bǎi líng sì. Also theliang form of 2 may, optionally, be used in the case of 200; 2,000; and 20,000 but not 20; so200 can be expressed as两百liǎng bǎi

A thousand has the form often with the addition of adian stroke over it.The character is possibly derived from the combination often andperson indicatingten lifetimes.

There is one new rule to apply, and that is that for numbers with two zeroes as in 2007, only one ‘ling’ is used for zero, it is not repeated:二千零七èr qiān líng qī. One of the three traditional language primers is the1000 character classic with 1,000 different characters used only once; it is arranged in rhymes and used for calligraphy practice.

For centurieswanten thousand was the largest numeric character in common usage and so is used in many idiomatic expressions forvery many as inWanli Changcheng for theGreat Wall literally meaningcountless mile fortress. In English, ‘million’ is often used in a similar way for an unbelievably large number such asone in a million chance orbet you a million dollars. Many translations translatewan literally asten thousand when a term likeinfinite,countless,forever ormyriad is more accurate. For example the proclamationMay the Emperor live for ten thousand years really meansMay the Emperor live forever.

Coins used to be strung into groups of one hundred and so one hundred strings of cash was considered a fortune.

The character is 'borrowed' from a character that is pronounced the same way, in this case it iswan forscorpion萬. Thesimplified written form threw away the scorpion association and chose a stylized form of the Indian good fortune symbol: theswastika卍.