A phone number with consecutive repeating digits, let alone a string of the same five, is rare and considered appealing in China. A string of repeating auspicious numbers is worth an even higher price. A number that ended in five 5s was sold for $52,000 in an online auction in 2019, and a number comprising eight 7s was auctioned for $560,000 in 2017. In Hong Kong, where Cantonese is the dominant spoken language, the number seven sounds similar to a swear word and is associated with ghosts. When the semiautonomous territory introduced phone numbers in 2015 that began with 7 or 4 — the latter a numerological stand-in for death across the country and therefore the unluckiest number in Chinese culture — cellphone operators complained.

Source: New York Times August 17, 2020 07:18 UTC