Author: sinocelt

[lastupdated]
This is related to a previous post I wrote about 666 being very lucky in China here . Only now, I recently found a license plate that most Chinese people would find totally cursed.
The number 4 in Chinese, 四 si4 (in Mandarin) rhymes with 死 si3 (in Mandarin) meaning death. As such, Chinese people avoid the number 4 like the plague. The number 4 to Chinese people is considered cursed and very unlucky. Continue reading “A Cursed Chinese License Plate”

[lastupdated]

If you live in Mainland China, it can be extremely frustrating updating Ubuntu and/or Linux Mint from within the country if you are connecting to a foreign server because of the Great Firewall of China. In order to alleviate this problem, you should use Ubuntu repositories from within Mainland China. This article should work for any variants of Ubuntu as well which use Ubuntu’s repositories. This article is broken up into 2 parts. First is how to do it for Ubuntu 12.04 and Linux Mint 13 or any of their derivatives, and the 2nd half is how to do it for Ubuntu 14.04 and Linux Mint 17 or any of their derivatives. Continue reading “Ubuntu and Linux Mint repositories within Mainland China”

[lastupdated]
This is a fascinating topic to me. Did you ever wonder the meaning of country names in Chinese? Usually, names of foreign countries in Chinese are phonetic, and sometimes the characters that Chinese picked are very interesting for countries’ names in Chinese. Continue reading “Country names in Chinese”

When you see the number 666, do you think it is very lucky or very unlucky? Why? If you come from a Western country, or a country greatly influenced by Christianity, then you might think that 666 is very unlucky because from the Book of Revelation in the Bible, 666 is the number of the beast (the Antichrist), and hence extremely unlucky or even an evil number. But in China, 666 is very lucky. Continue reading “666 The Number Of The Beast Or Very Lucky”

[lastupdated]
Traditionally, Chinese people read from right to left, and top to bottom. But with the arrival of European influence, the Chinese changed to reading from left to right, and top to bottom. Continue reading “Reading From Left to Right or Right To Left in Chinese”