Chongqing resident Yu Chengliang has been busy the past few days telling all his contacts that he’s changed his phone number... again.
His new number, which ends 88888, was purchased for the price of RMB12,000 before the New Year, in what will have been the seventh or eighth number he’s gone through over the past 20 years. Most of these numbers have ended with several 8s or 9s, his previous 99999 number setting him back RMB20,000. He claims, in fact, that he's spent over RMB100,000 on phone numbers so far.
As a businessman, Yu says the reason he cares so much about his digits is that a good sequence of numbers represents one’s strength in business potential partners’ eyes.
“Plus they’re easy to remember,” he adds.
“I once had a Feng Shui master tell my fortune in Mount Emei," Yu explains, "and he said that numbers ending with 9, 8 or 5 suit me particularly well. They’re supposed to be good for my family and businesses.”
Liu Wei has been doing business for more than 10 years. He says that most of those willing to spend thousands on phone numbers are middle-aged businessmen who see them as symbols of power and identity. Young people are not so sensitive to numbers, however, since phones aren’t their only communication tools - they rely more on QQ or WeChat.
However, some numbers with sequences of “886” or “444” are not so hot since in Chinese “886” sounds like “bye bye” and four sounds like “death.”
Liu explains that two types of numbers are in-demand on the market right now: one is those with several successive numbers, and the more same numbers it has the more expensive it is (those end with several “8” or “9” are usually over RMB10,000); the other is older cell phone numbers starting with “1380” or “1390,” which usually cost over RMB2,000.
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