Things you need to know for business & everyday life in China part:5 15. Chinese sensitivity to numbers. Many Chinese people are superstitious about numbers. The pronunciation of the number 4 in Chinese rhymes with “death” or “failure.” Many Chinese try very hard not to have their addresses or telephone numbers contain the numeral 4. And the number 14 is worse. The Chinese word for 14 rhymes with “sure to fail, sure to die.” The numbers 3 and 8 are good numbers. The number 3 in Chinese rhymes with “growth,” which is therefore very welcome to business people. The number 8 rhymes with the Chinese word for “prosperity.” The number 168 sounds in Chinese like “forever prosperous,” which is a definite crowd pleaser. It is not an accident that the last four digits of the telephone number of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Shanghai is 8888. Building Trust in the Chinese Society Now for a personal story. I grew up in Hong Kong in the 1950s. My parents had a dry-goods store. One day, I overheard my mother talking with a salesman. They were reminiscing about how long it had taken for the salesman to persuade my mother to accept his merchandise. It took the salesman seven visits to succeed, but their business relationship lasted for decades until my parents retired. I witnessed the same mindset and behavior in selling books and information products to Chinese librarians. One has to meet people face-to-face. We need to make presentations of our products, followed by a dinner here and a banquet there. The initial visits may not result in orders, but orders will come sooner or later and the relationship tends to be long lasting. Beyond Business It is true that understanding the finer points of doing business outside of one’s own culture can only broaden one’s market possibilities. The personal enrichment one experiences during global business exchanges, however, can oftentimes equal that of the career success we enjoy by better understanding the other individual.