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Last Thursday, China Daily reported a bizarre story about the owner of a cheap automobile who "spent a fortune on a lucky license plate" in Foshan, Guangdong province. The man bought the license plate with the number of 88888 for his 40,000-yuan ($5,882) compact car. The report did not reveal how much the man paid for the plate but it was estimated at more than 200,000 yuan ($29,412), according to local sources. Figure eight, pronounced as "ba" in Chinese, is believed to be a lucky number because it is homophonic to the Chinese character Fa, which means getting rich. Five eights definitely symbolize tons of wealth. However, it is only wishful thinking. Things evolve along natural or logical courses or are occasionally diverted by some fortuity but will never be affected by some numerical sphinx that sounds pleasant to the ears. The belief that numbers will bring good or bad luck simply because of their homophonic pronunciation is even more stupid than superstition. Anyhow, superstition is based on some telling reasoning. For instance, nine was thought to represent the highest level in Chinese ancient mythology. That is reasonable, because one, two and three represent good, better and best respectively; triple-three, or nine, is naturally the highest. Ancient Chinese believed that heaven had nine levels. The origin of the idea that figure eight stands for good luck also reveals its absurdity. Number eight was never regarded as representing good luck in the annals of Chinese superstition. It was only in the early 1980s that some Guangdong locals began to favor it as an auspicious symbol because ba and fa are homophones in the local dialect and that time happened to herald Chinese people's awakening to the justification of pursuing wealth. | 
